Diary of an Obsidian Destroyer
by Ihsan997
Summary: In the chamber, I wait. In the darkness, I wait. All is lost, yet I want to start again. And as time ticks by, I wait. Wait for the day when my encasing will shatter. For the day when I will break free. For the day when I will become whole again. And on, I wait. And wait. But not for much longer... (65 chapters total)
1. Beginning

**A/N: this is exactly what it sounds like; after eons of imprisonment, Rahotepa begins to awake. A character sheet and some pictures of her will be posted on my Deviant Art page soon enough, for those interested.**

 **The chapters here will not be random drabble; it is a normal story from first person perspective, with a definite beginning and end and chapters that follow a logical progression.**

 **However, they may not always make sense at first since we see things from her perspective; just wait. This story will be updated infrequently, but it will be finished since it leads in to stories involving my other OCs whom she meets. Just wait.**

Wait.

Inside, I wait.

Where, I do not know. But I wait.

Even as my mind is hazy and by body is numb, I sense that I exist. Mildly, I panic; I do not know where I am. Lack of control terrifies me.

And so I wait for sensation to return to my limbs. For there is nothing for me to do, except wait.

And so I wait.

I try to shake my head; I cannot feel whether my neck responds or not. I know nothing, and all my mind can ask is where I am. Who it intends to answer, I do not know.

But the longer I wait, the more I begin to panic. Sensation does not return. Knowledge of my location evades me. I feel as if I have been fed an anesthetic potion, used by our healers when removing poisons from their patients. The haze should wear off, if that is where I am; but it does not wear off. I feel dizzy despite not sensing direction.

Why can't I sense direction?

I wait, trying to suppress the anxiety. I cannot see. I cannot move. I cannot feel. I cannot hear. But I can think. And it's maddening.

When I realize that I am not breathing, I feel myself break inside. I try to shake, try to thrash, try to scream, but nothing happens. I call out for help from my loved ones, but I cannot remember their names. Yet I know that they are real, because my heart aches when I cannot recall their names or their faces.

Where are they?

Where am I?

Why is this happening to me?


	2. Existence

Time passes. Weeks…years. Without external stimulus, I have nothing by which I can measure the passage of time. I have nothing by which I can gauge whether or not the universe still exists, or if I am all that is left after an apocalypse.

I have nothing by which I can know if I exist.

The prospect terrifies me; and in my desperation, I try to convince myself that terror and desperation are real. If I feel that which is real, surely I am also real…am I not?

Am I not?

The haze returns from time to time; I sense that I have lost my consciousness more than once. If I lose it and then regain it, then I possess it; if I possess anything, I must be real.

I must.

I wait for nothing. Nothing. There are no consistent sensations reaching my being. I do not even feel like I am floating. Just the haze, and my fear.

Fear of what?

There must be a reason for my fear…uncertainty? The unknown? Those are 'uns,' and they do nothing to ground me in any sort of reality.

This is not torment. This is not even hell. This is nothing. I do not know which is worse.


	3. Orientation

Time. Place. Person. Those three aspects comprise the concept of orientation.

Time. Place. Person. I repeat it like a mantra, grasping desperately to hold on to something.

Time. Place. Person. Fighting to remember, I try to retain as many concepts and ideas that I can, for that is all I have left. Panic eventually pushed me to accept that I am real, and that I exist; perhaps it is some sort of residual arrogance, but I feel proud of myself. Tenacity drives me to mentally flail, reaching out for anything to hold on to; to hold on. Hold on to anything, anything at all. To refuse to simply fade away into the gaping nothing that opposes my being simply by its own non-being.

Time. Place. Person. No matter what, I reject the notion of giving in to the nothing. That is proof enough that I am real; that will to _be_ real. I exist because I want to, need to, will not accept anything other than to. Than to exist.

Time. Place. Person. Repetition almost spurs me to the point of emotion, more proof that I am real. Time has been robbed from me since I do not thirst, nor feel, nor hear, nor see, nor even breathe; I can not even feel my own heartbeat to measure the time. Place has been robbed from me since I have no means of experiencing anything except nothing. Perhaps the two are connected; external stimulus is required for the measurement of both time and place. Synapse response. Robbed from me together. And...I feel the haze coming on.

Time. Place. Person. I posses the last of the three. I exist. My heart aches for names and faces that continue to escape me, my soul is torn and wounded from the lack of even a simple conversation or the closeness to another living person, my patience is stretched on a torture rack from the lack of stimuli. But all of that is more proof that...synapse response...exists in me. In. Which is a place. I am like...no, I am not a place. That is not logical. My words do not make sense.

Time. Place. Person. The haze is here, dragging me without need for direction or place. I fight it as I always do, and I no longer fear being engulfed by it since it has happened so many times over these days...weeks...years? But I fight it. I fight because I feel the need for synapse respo...to react. For my person. Delirious. Real...

Time. Place. Person.


	4. Attachment

Leather. Hide. Like fur. On my paws. I touch the fur on the hut with the fur on my paws. The fur is not like my fur. It is dead. Stretched across the poles.

Smaller paws patter in the snow. To my right? It sounds like the right. I turn away from the hut; it's made of animal skin. The black spots mark the white fur of my paws; I see them stretched out before me. Grasping. Reaching. What do I want?

He leaps. My heart races and a tingle shoots up my long spine. His four tiny legs carry him as he leaps and reaches forward with his two tiny arms, all six limbs springing. Toward me.

Fur the same snowy white color as mine is punctuated by black spots. His cheeks bunch up as he smiles, bearing only recently erupted fangs at me. The cub launches himself between my arms, mewing for me to catch him.

And then dark. Nothing.

What...are those words mine?

Did I just think that?

Nobody answers. I feel nothing again. I am alone inside the nothing.

I try to move arms but I find none before me. I try to sense my heartbeat, but I sense no such thing. I try to move legs to shift weight, but there is no body to be weighed; there is no direction for me to shift in. There is only the nothing and my mind.

But...where is the snow? Where are my paws? Where is the smiling cub? I remembered something just before a few...seconds? Hours? Months? Why can I not remember now?

Why? Why?! Why am I beginning to forget the...fur? And...place...with white? What is white? Someone jumped into my arms...arms I do not have now. Who jumped at me behind the...place...with a covering...made of something.

I forget. It is too late. I remembered something but I do not remember what it was. Maybe a dream...I do not know.

I...am tired...hazy...tired. Sleep. Sleep.

The mew of a cub reaches me before everything goes dark.


	5. Flight

**A/N: I've written ahead just to have chapters ready and as a sort of mini preview, I wanted to inform readers that the first "arc" of sorts will span the first ten chapters or so. At that point, the chapters will still retain the very short word count and almost abstract, confused narration but...things change around chapter ten. I'm expecting at least five arcs total, but that's all still being written. Until then...well, maybe enjoy isn't the right word. Here's the next chapter.**

The sensation of cold is gone; so, too, is my vision. The dark envelopes me once more, pulling me into it until I know nothing else.

Was it real? The huts...the snow? I feel as though I saw it, yet I can not recall what it all looked like. My mind can not recall what anything looks like.

I remember feeling cold...and feeling snow. Yet I can not remember what anything feels like now.

But worse...so much worse...the child.

There was a cub. I saw him; I know that I did. Four legs, two arms, two torsos; just like all of our people. His fur was...white. like snow. And the black spots...

...wait. I remember him having black spots, yet I did not see any black spots. How do I know he had black spots?

Why do I know that the arms reaching out before me to catch him also had black spots? Were those arms covered in a...jacket? Were they uncovered?

I try hard...so very hard. The nothingness leaves my mind, replacing itself with an unobtainable goal. The harder I try to remember what I saw, the more I forget.

So why does my heart ache? Why does my soul feel ripped in half at the sound of the cub's mewing?

I try to thrash, try to squirm, force myself to think until I reach exhaustion. All conscious thought has left me and I scream inside, begging for the memory to return again.


	6. Anchorage

More sounds and images come and go. Always fleeting, always fast, always just beyond the grasp of my mind. Enumerating them is as impossible as measuring how much time has passed.

There is an emotional connection to the scenes that play out. I am not sure if these are events I had seen before, or mere figments of my imagination. None of them are vivid, none of them make any sense, but I know that they are real. Even if they did not occur, and they are nothing but fantasies, they exist...in the form of fantasies, in my existent mind.

At every instance, I forget more. I see faces that I can no longer remember immediately thereafter. I experience sensations that are soon lost on me. The memories drain out of my mind as quickly as they come to me, further and further erasing who I once was.

I fight to hold on to what slivers I can; that fight becomes increasingly futile as countless, immeasurable moments tick by. More and more escapes my grasp and soon enough, I know nothing save my struggle to remember.

My struggle anchors me. Gives me purpose despite the crushing pain of forgetting faces of people I feel I should know. People who smile. People who care. People who I want so badly to remember. For the first time, I successfully resist the haze at it attempts to claim my consciousness once more. It does not anger; it does not care. It only seeks to put me to sleep at the most inopportune moments.

I face the gaping maw of the nothing. I do not think I can ever win; even now, I can not recall when the last memory came and went, or what I saw. But I struggle all the same; I struggle out of fear. For if I give up, then what else is there?

Nothing?

Will I become a part of the nothing?

Is that what it wants?


	7. Assault

The sun just barely peeks over the dunes of snow that time of morning. There are no clouds; there usually are not any in the summer. Winter is much more precipitous.

Blue sky above; white snow below. Air crisp...ahh. I do not even need snow shoes at this time of year. The pads of my feet only feel a little bit chilly.

We go for a slow walk; it is nice. Nicer this way. But I am not in control of what I say. That should make me feel afraid, but it does not. I enjoy it...so very, very much. Even if I am only watching.

He scouts ahead, leaving me to walk at my own pace. His four legs look thick because they are still bundled up, but he removes his jacket and so his two arms are visible. He has stripes...mother always told me I was lucky to find someone with stripes. But my spots are okay. Both are okay. He is not paying attention, and so I manage to hurry up next to him and I pinch his arm. He understands that I want him to chase me, but he slows down when he does. He lets me win and does not catch up until I stop. But I did not stop because I thought I won. I turn to him and tell him that I felt a kick...

...what?

Let go of me!

Let go!

I fight the haze with all my might, even though I do not have paws and limbs to use. I have no body and yet I feel the difference between me and the nothingness, granting me only that little bit more of orientation as my person grasps a tiny sliver of time, even when I know that I will drop it soon. Anger, a very real anger, surges and I try to mentally push the darkness that I feel smothering me on all sides.

Stay away from me, I scream inside, using the strongest mental voice I can. Do not touch me, I do not grant you that right! Just leave me alone!

I want it! That memory is mine, and I want it back! I _know_ it was real, I scream at the nothing. You will not convince me that it was a fantasy. I felt it; I felt it so deeply. I felt his arms around me, felt the sensation of his fur on mine as he hugged me there on the dunes of snow. I do not know who he was, or who I once was, but I know that was me - it is **not** a story I made up!

Get away from me! Get away! Just leave me alone and let me remember, even if it hurts!

Stop taking the memories, _please_! They are all I have left! They...I...hate you...may every curse...be upon...you...nothing.

The sun rises even higher, and he looks into my eyes. If the haze will win this time, then at least let me remember those eyes.


	8. Clips

Why?

Flashes of fur wave just before my disembodied view, showing patterns of stripes and spots. Voices laugh as we play in the snow. Conversations play out as we wait out the storm in dugout dwellings; a closeness to other people that I miss so very much is felt.

Why?

Images of nerubians running slave raids cause me to feel anger and fear, yet also hope as more images of us pulling our brethren away from the chains and escaping capture interrupt them. Ice trolls and yetis threaten us but are scared away by our falling boulder traps and our sorcerers. Tragedies befall us, losses are incurred, but a 'we' that I don't even understand endure.

Why?

Frost hares are hamstrung on a corded line as my paws prepare a stew in an earthen pot. An older woman wrinkles a nose that I somehow feel is like mine as she shows me how to sew a pair of thick leggings. A man's four legs brace strongly against the snow as his two arms dig a new latrine, and I consider nuzzling the back of his neck.

Why?

Why?!

Why can I not control when and for how long I see these things? Why can I not prevent them from disappearing as quickly as they come? Why can I not fight the haze every time it puts me to sleep mid memory? Why can I not remember any details a mere moment later? Why can I not remember the features of an entire face even if I remember an entire conversation?

What conversation?

No...already. It is happening. A woman...I feel she is like me. In her paws...cloth...and...what?

What? What was it that I literally just said? Said...past tense. Not about the present. And...

...I slept. Again. A coward, the haze is; always sneaking, always pounding when I do not look.

Why? Why am I being forced to watch all of this? If I can not retain these memories, then why show them to me at all? Why am I being tortured like this?

If it is all supposed to end, then why can it not just end? Why does the nothing stare at me, always so indifferent? Why must I be robbed of the images one by one?

If this is the end, then just let it be so. To remember and then forget is worse than to not know at all.


	9. Longing

I will miss you.

You can not hear me. I do not think that you ever will. But my words are all that I have left...all that I have left. For I can no longer find the strength to hold on.

Dear cub...mewing cub. Jumping into my arms. I will miss the way you purr in my lap. The softness of your coat. The life in your eyes.

Dear man...warm man. Pressing a path in the snowy meadow. I will miss the way the sun reddens your whiskers. The rhythm of your breathing. The sound of your laugh.

Dear woman...wise woman. Teaching me things I can not remember. I will miss the patience you show to me. The calmness of your demeanor. The restraint in your speech.

I will miss you all.

For every memory that escapes me...every image that returns only to flee...every piece of my life that mocks me with impunity...I die all over again. My heart is shattered all over again. My hell becomes real all over again.

I can not continue. I am...sorry. I am so, so sorry, but I am not strong enough. I am tired; I am weak. The haze will never stop; the sleep will never leave. I will never win.

And so I will let go.

I will give up.

I thought I was strong enough...I tried to fight. But I am too tired...and the result will be the same.

I have already lost so much of you...what remains will still be lost, one way or another. I can not keep you no matter what I do...I can only prolong my own suffering.

I am done. I am sorry...but I must let go of you all.

The nothing stares me down...always there. Always hungry. Always waiting. I stare back, the fight in me gone.

I am ready.


	10. Nothing

Nothing...nothing standing before me. Never taunting. Never teasing. Never abandoning. Unlike my old life. To be fair, the nothing has caused me less pain than my memories.

The nothing does not feel. Does not hate. Does not care. Not at all. It is always waiting. Always present. Always ready.

So am I.

For the first time, I feel control. My actions are my own. The choice is mine. Even if it is annihilation...the choice is mine.

The nothingness already prepares itself. Already, I can feel it surround me, eager to flood. It does not pounce; it is not active. It merely fills and consumes.

Within me lies the person I once was...the people I once loved...the life I once lived. The sources of all my pain.

Alright nothing...I am ready.

Invasion. Intrusion. More violating than any feeling I could imagine. The nothing no longer hesitates once I cease my resistance, and I can feel its haste to consume all that it finds. It takes everything, hungry for my memories. And slowly, bit by bit, I feel the person who I once was disappear.

It is over. I do not know how long it lasted, but it is over. Memories...sorrow...pain. All of it is gone. Turned to nothing.

And yet...I do not sense the nothing. What happened? Where did...drowsy...in the dark...go to?

Drowsy in the dark...what does that mean? Did I think that? My words...that sentence? It means, then, what? Does it mean?

Mean?

The drowsy. Dark. To go down is...to settle. At the bottom. And.

Hmm...words. My thoughts. I think them; so I am.

Drowsy. Dark.

Drowsy.

Dark.

Done.

.

..

...

...

...

"She's gone."

"Then it's time...move her onto the table."

 **A/N: end of the beginning. And now...sense perception, and thus a new arc of the story, begins.**


	11. Procession

Words. I do not know who I am, but I know that I can understand the words they are saying. And I understand that it is not my native language, even though I do not know who I am. Consciousness returns to me quickly - far more quickly than my sense of balance and direction.

"She resisted for a very long time...who would have thought a villager's mind would out up such a fight?"

They chitter. Nerubians. I know their language well, but I do not know why. I know very little of them - remember very little, I suppose - but I know enough to feel uneasy.

"It matters not; the ritual is complete. Now, wield the control pylon properly."

Familiar words. They sound very far away, but I can tell that my hearing is muffled; I am disoriented. The people who are speaking about me are very close. I try to strain - not strain, but try to strain - and find that I feel nothing. Perhaps I am paralyzed; were I frozen, I doubt I would be able to so coherently think. Attempts to move fail, and I experience difficulty discerning which way is up and which was is down. To discern movement is easier, however.

Feelers. Many hands of smaller, more nimble nerubians tap all over me, tickling what few nerve endings of mine still respond as I feel them performing some sort of...procedure. There is no pain, or even pressure, and their words are especially muffled. Were I not so uncomfortable around their people, the tapping of the hands of the smaller individuals would almost feel pleasant and relaxing.

No matter how much time passes, I can not remember why I should not like them. Attempts to remember anything are in vain; I must have amnesia. Finding no reason to fight a losing battle, I resign myself to remembering naturally as I dip in and out of slumber.

"This way. The master needs us to begin the transformation process on other specimens."

I wake up; they are talking about me again. Barely - just barely - my vision returns to me. Patches of the darkness that is my field of vision turn a bit lighter, and the contrast slowly becomes apparent - though much slower than the speed at which my hearing has returned. I am moving again, and I feel several other people around me; yet they do not carry me, and I do not move of my own accord. I feel as if I am...encased. In some sort of shell.

We come to a halt, and I _feel_ a new person looking me over. I _feel_ them...so strong. So heavy. Discomfort stings me internally, yet I do not recoil; deep down inside, I want to move toward that discomfort. Like an instinct beyond my conscious thought. The one radiating power leans close to me, and I can even sense the exact number of inches between us.

"This one is complete...seal it away until the master calls. Our work has not yet finished."


	12. Who

Exhaustion from my attempt to listen weakens me; proximity to the person of power knocks me out cold. A sense of denial and want leaves me in a state similar to pain, yet different. So many sensations I can not explain...why do I not hunger? Why do I not thirst? What is this new sensation that I feel?

Why do I not breathe?

I shake, and my sense of balance and direction are disrupted once again. The people I feel next to me become irritated, and berate each other as I continue to move through no effort of mine or theirs.

"Careful; watch the corners."

"We go this way."

"Twenty third chamber down; right here."

They are obviously discussing directions. Because I am moving alongside them, I assume that I am being transported to a place. I can not feel my body; my attempts to twitch and struggle provide no synapse response at all. Ideas race through my head, but without any context at all, they are all in vain. For some reason, the lack of answers does not bother me as much as I feel it should; perhaps it is my feeling of exhaustion.

They spoke of a master...who is this master? What does he want?

We turn a corner...it is the clearest movement I have felt until now. Spiderlike footsteps prick on a stone floor, and I can feel the nerubian people that have been escorting me finally grip...well, I can not tell if they are touching me directly. I still can not feel.

"Here. As long as she is facing toward the door."

The man speaking was right next to my ear; I can hear every detail of the distortion in his voice. For whatever reason, I am rather familiar with the way the nerubians speak, and I know full well that something is very wrong with him; his voice is not normal by the standards of his people. The distortion almost distracts from his words...as long as I am facing toward the door. I seek a means to flex the muscles in my throat and jaw, but I can not feel them.

Urgency and a bit of disappointment well up inside of me as I feel the arachnid people skittering away from me. My vision begins to focus just as I notice their dark outlines moving toward a gaping hole. The slightest tingle in the nerves in my left front leg makes itself known just as the other people stop touching...near me. My hearing returns sensitively enough for me to listen to the warped voices from a distance just as they move around a stone wall. Disappointment turns not to despair but to irritated frustration as they disappear from my sense perception entirely, just at the same time that it becomes viable.

Two small lights beside the gaping hole shine dimly enough for my vision to gradually adjust. As soon as I am able to see in enough detail to recognize the transition between colors, the gaping hole is covered by a piece of iron. The sound echoes loudly in my chamber and I am truly alone.

 **A/N: if only you were, Rahotepa...**


	13. Want

Periods of time which feel like weeks pass before my sense perception becomes sharp enough to resemble true orientation. My mind sleeps often, and I do not fight it. For there is not much else for me to do, other than observe. And absorb information.

It does not require the full period of time for me to realize at least part of the truth of my situation. Despite my weakness, occasional synapses across my nerve endings twitch, granting me glimpses of my still existent body. While I do not remember who I once was, I know for sure that I am no longer that person now.

I do not breathe. It is not that I simply can not feel myself breathing; I do not breathe at all. My consciousness and slumber are not related to anything physical, and I do not feel pain. There is a strange sense of...yearning, deep down inside me, that is neither physical nor emotional. Not necessarily deeper; just different. I want, but for what, I do not quite know.

Hearing has returned more or less complete, but all sounds are muffled by that which I can see. Color and contrast return the most slowly, but I am patient. Over time, I realize that I truly am inside of a chamber; I can see the lines denoting the mortar between square bricks. They are all a pale blue color, like ice over the ocean water, and look rather ancient. A heavy iron door seals me inside, and an odd tool that resembles a spring holds it closed; while I find that my amnesia has left me with much general knowledge of the world, I can recall nothing about how tools function. Suffice to say that the door functions by a mechanism which I do not understand. Two crystals floating above tall iron rods illuminate my chamber; I recognize them as naturally glowing rather than magically, but I have no idea as to why I should know that.

I can not see myself. There are no mirrors. I know that I exist; people spoke around me, about me, and the person of power looked at me. I know that they are nerubians, and I know that they pass by my door on occasion in addition to...other beings. But more than anything, I want to badly to see myself. I doubt that I will remember who I am based in a reflection, but that is not the point. I just need to see. If there is only one small request I could make of these people, it would be a mirror.

The coherence of my thoughts is upsetting. Boredom is killing me already. Silently, I beg for the strange, distorted nerubians to visit me again.

 **A/N: for the few who knew about our personal situation, I'm happy to say that our son has been cured and was discharged from the hospital today. Cherish those you love...this was by far the worst week of our lives.**


	14. Sealed

I have decided that I am not paralyzed. Were I paralyzed, my body would still be breathing at least...would it not? Yet my vision does not bob up and down with the heaving of my breast, nor does it move from the soft pumping of blood through my veins; my body is completely still. Even when I fall asleep, my eyelids to not close. When I am awake, they are mostly open, obscuring just part of my vision; when I fall asleep, they come together slightly but do not shut completely. And although my sense of touch is very weak, I can just barely feel that the surface of my eyeballs, too, are...encased. The same she'll which coats the rest of my body coats them, just in a different layer and thickness.

I am not paralyzed. I am not frozen. What am I?

Voices again; no time to ponder the meaning of my existence. Philosophical concerns must be pushed aside as more immediate questions come to mind. Just beyond the door, I can hear the same warped tones engaging in hushed conversation. My irritation increases despite the fact that I am almost certain that I am some sort of a prisoner. My desire for answers is so great.

Slowly, the door begins to open of its own accord. The spring coils up and the iron grates against the bricks, allowing more crystalline light to flow into the chamber. Although my eyes require a few seconds to refocus, I can already tell that the situation is wrong.

Jerking movements carry the spider people forward on stiff legs walking an uneven gait. Even by the standards of nerubians, these people are hunched over. I know them well, and these ones do not look well. They move closer...dear god.

They are partially mummified. More than a simple costume, their bandages are browned and worn, and a few of them sport unhealed wounds crusted over with blood that had dried long ago. I have no sense of smell or taste anymore, but I imagine that they smell decrepit due to the flies; nerubians are a clean folk and would not tolerate vermin. When I see the light blue glow in their eyes, my sense of disturbance of overridden by that same yearning. It is not particularly strong, but it exists.

Of the several decrepit, decayed walking corpses, a shorter individual reaches forward toward...me. I can not move or even feel my head, so only from the bottom of my vision can I see her hand reach toward me. The closeness to which she moves means that she must be touching my body, but I can not feel it physically; there is only the psychological sensation of disrespect. I feel as if I am being treated as a specimen for examination. And when she makes contact, the yearning burns me.

"No. Not this one. Reseal the door; the master has enough for the front lines already."

This time, I am paralyzed; not literally, but by emotion. Confusion. Shock. Even anger. As quickly as they entered, the nerubians leave again and that heavy iron door automatically grates closed at the pace of a snail, leaving me alone with my questions and my outrage.


	15. Frustration

For what feels like weeks, I stew in my chamber, unable to focus on anything other than the words of the small nerubian woman. Thoughts of my condition and captivity fall to the wayside as I try to understand what she meant, and to suppress my sense of moral outrage.

Enough for the front lines...what does that mean? While I do not remember exactly who I am, I realize that I have general knowledge of some topics and not others. When I remember the bandages the injured looking nerubians wore, I understand exactly what sort of material the cloth was woven from. When I look at the spring controlling the door, I understand nothing of how it works. And when that woman spoke of the front lines, I failed to understand what she meant. I still do.

Front lines...like in a war? I know what war is, and I also know that I know little about it. I have no recollection of combat and tactics; it does not seem possible that I was once a soldier. What else could the front lines mean?

Why are there enough? Am I not good enough for whatever they are planning?

And if so, is that a good or a bad thing?

Why will they not tell me! Why will they not speak to me directly instead of each other! Weeks, hours, however long passes by and I can hear them pass my door by. Conversations are held out of earshot and I am never addressed or spoken to; I feel as upset now as I did when the woman reached out to touch my body as if I were not an intelligent being, but some exhibit to be gawked at.

I do not care who the master is...not particularly. I just want to know what he wants from me, and from the supposed others he has. How many chambers are there? Am I one of many captives, or am I special?

The fact that those nerubians looked like dead people has not even sunk in to my mind yet. The fact that I can not move to lie down yet never feel physical strain in my muscles does not bother me. The fact that my amnesia seems to be permanent is not what angers me.

The lack of attention and regard angers me! I was treated as if I were like one of the tall iron rods supporting the enlightening crystals. Whatever is wrong with me, these spider people know...they know, but they do not tell me! They do not help me to move or speak!

Let me _out_ of here. I want to get **out** of here. I do not care about their master or their front lines; I want to be set free and then be told what this has to do with me. Every other question, every single other worry I had about my condition melts away because they will not let me **out** , and now it is all I can focus on.

 **Out**...I want _**out!**_


	16. Intruders

My displeasure at being captive disrupts my patterns of slipping in and out of consciousness. No longer am I able to simply hibernate whenever I grow bored or particularly miserable; instead, I find myself forced to remain awake and listening to it all.

Over time, I find myself calm enough to reflect on my new reality. The prospects only create more despair within my non beating heart.

Every so often my nerves send twinges of sensation to my brain, but aside from that I can not move. To date I have not ever felt myself breathe, nor do I possess a sense of smell. Because my mouth is held closed, I do not know if I can taste. My vision and hearing, however, are very clear. I possess a perfect view of the same bricks and mortar that constantly taunt me, the same door that refuses to open and reveal more visitors. I find my anger at the nerubians beginning to grow.

I can not count the time - days or hours - that passes before the incident.

Skittering rings throughout the halls outside, and I can hear many of the strange, unusually decrepit nerubians running back and forth. Soon enough, their sounds are joined by those of two legged creatures though the movement is uneven and I can not discern who they are. But they are all concerned. The voices of the nerubians speak nervously but not quite loud enough for me to hear their words. They speak in foreign languages as well, communicating to their guests in urgent tones. I rebel against my encasing, wishing I could demand to know what was going on. But I can not even register my demand.

The first loud crash shakes a good portion of whatever building I am imprisoned inside of. I can already tell that whoever is causing it is not a welcome guest.

 **A/N: end of the second (and shortest) arc of the story. Just a transition, but necessary as Rahotepa starts to realize what's been done to her. Up next is the third arc, which is also shorter (like the fourth), all of which are shorter than the fifth (and final) arc.**


	17. Phobia

I listen intently, for it is all I can do. More crashes shake the entire building, but they are not the natural sort from earthquakes, nor are they quite that powerful. Although I can still recall nothing of my own past and identity, I retain enough general knowledge of the world to know what a siege is. I imagine that this building contains a guarded entrance, and that the entrance is being attacked.

Apprehension bubbles up inside of me. Even if I can not feel my limbs very well, or my heart beat at all, I can still feel the emotional strain of distress. I am angry at my captors, but my anger does not reach the level of hate. Nor can I be so sure that whoever is besieging them will necessarily be friendly toward me. The devil you know...

Shouts ring out. I can hear them both in the hall just outside my door as well as above me; there must be multiple levels to this place. I never noticed it before. The nerubians are clearly afraid, and whoever is with them also begin to panic. This is not good.

Fighting erupts. I can hear the clash of weapons, the spray of liquids and the burn of magic. The invaders shout back in a different language, but one that seems vaguely familiar. Like nerubian, I understand it, and I also understand that I am not a native speaker. I do not know what my own language is since all I have with me are my thoughts, but I recognize this new one. It bothers me even more than the sound of nerubian.

Whatever battle is occurring outside my door must be fantastic, for I can put harrowing images with the sounds. Helpless to involve myself in it in any way, I feel the frustration sting me as I sit in my room, paralyzed and unable to affect the world around me.

The sense perception of the sounds and vibrations grounds me in reality, helping me to measure time. The battle is short; perhaps just over an hour. One by one I can hear my captors and their guests fall, along with a few of the invaders. It sounded like it must be brutal and grueling as the two sides pushed to gain mere inches against each other gradually, but I feel as if my knowledge of combat is that of a civilian. It is not my path in whatever life I lost.

The halls fall relatively quiet again as the invaders stalk around. Heavy footsteps plod, much heavier than what I feel is normal...and only hushed whispers in a foreign language that I start to recognize can be heard. I remain still, refusing to even move my eyes to observe the sides of my field of vision, or to even try to flex my limbs inside of their encasing. The silence is wrong...eerie. They are outside of my door.

Oh no...no, no, no, no, no! I know that! I recognize it!

Anxiety is replaced with fear, a fear I can not explain and do not feel the need to. So much of my knowledge is without explanation since I do not remember who I am, but it does not matter. This sort of fear is so primal that I would rather not know what sort of experiences created it. Inside of my casing, I begin to shiver.

The voices are speaking in Zandali...


	18. Imminent

Every footstep that thuds on the bricks outside causes me to jump inside. For however many weeks I have been conscious, I have not experienced fear like this. Even when I was a captive of the nerubians, I did not feel afraid of them; they gave me no reason to feel anything other than frustration.

But this...there is something in my past. The past life I can not remember. I know the language of Zandali; it is spoken by the ice trolls. And somehow, I know that I do not like them. Not one bit.

Voices whisper again; were I able to shriek, I would have at the suddenness of the sound. A group of them are in my hallway, and I hear weight being dragged unevenly; they must be removing corpses of the fallen. Cursed, taunting hope wells up inside of my soulless shell, tricking me into believing that the invaders only wish to pick at the corpses as I know their people tend to do. But they are after more than food. I can hear them entering the other rooms in the hallway, walking inside as if the doors have been opened. In truth, I don't know if those rooms have doors like mine; my vision did not return to me until I was placed here. But everything about this situation feels so wrong...scenarios fly through my head.

What if the ice trolls just leave? Without them or the nerubians, will I be trapped here forever? Will I ever be able to move? Will I ever be able to speak?

That scenario will not come to pass...they are right outside of my door. Familiarity creeps in, and I recognize not only their words but also their boorish, uncouth manner of speaking.

"Open, open," a female voice grunts from outside. Even in their own language, they are not articulate people; I suspect that, were I able to open my mouth, I could speak more correctly than them in their own language. But there is no time for that now.

There is no time for me to ruminate on their poor grammar. The walls shake again, but this time it is not the entire building; just my room. The bricks hold, as does the mortar, but the iron doors bulge. The heavy rumble of the lungs of a big male echo outside, possibly an alpha. I do not know why I possess all of this information, but I do. It does not help me to relax when the second thud echoes and the iron door bulges more visibly. Chips of mortar are flung forward under the force of the barbarian's blow, and dust trickles down from the ceiling and the corners of the room.

Is this it, then? This is my existence? To wake up paralyzed by a bunch of dead looking nerubians, only to be ignored until I am eaten by the ice trolls? For that is what they must want; my knowledge tells me it is so.

A loud, metallic scrape grates in my ears as the iron door is rocked again, this time hard enough to break. The indent of a two knuckled fist presses in near the top corner as the barbarian tries to break down the door, to the encouragement of the female. Two icy blue fingers, thick and calloused with brittle, blunt nails, peel down the corner of the iron as if it were paper. Two beady red eyes stare at me from outside...I am going to die.


	19. Ignorance

The two beady eyes disappear from view as the alpha moves to the side, temporarily delaying my death. I can hear them even when they don't shout since he peeled part of the door open...their conversation injects puzzlement into my mix of fear and panic.

"No bodies here," the male grunts from out of my view. "Just cat goddess."

No bodies? But he can see me...he can look right at me. This does not make any sense.

The familiar sound of the mechanism for opening the door scrapes against the wall, disrupted because of the barbarian's roughness. The female is more nuanced and solves what must seem like a puzzle to such a backward people.

"Like this," she rasps.

My nerves finally began to respond to my mind more regularly as the spring coils and the iron door opens. Just when I finally begin to regain some sense of touch, I find that my end is nigh. The unfairness hurts so much. But what I see next to the invaders shocks me so much that the pain is easy to ignore.

Lying at the feet of the ice trolls are bodies. Some of them are familiar. Some of them are not.

Two nerubians in bandages are strewn about in the hallway; some of the blood on their carapaces is old and some is from this recent fight. They don't just look dead; they look as if they had already decayed. My brain retains knowledge of what their people look like, and they are not normal. But the other bodies stick out more. Two of them look like...meat. Rotten meat. Vaguely I can see patches of hair on their monkey like heads; instead of two arms and four legs like myself, or the nerubians, they have only two legs like ice trolls or vrykul. But they are much smaller than both...and they are so ugly. They look like small, decomposed vrykul and flies buzz about them.

More disgusting is the big pink blob. It has two legs and is the size of vrykul, but fat, and instead of two arms like normal people it has many. I should feel nauseous, and when I do not, my confusion only grows.

No time. The two ice trolls step over the bodies and walk in. Big like vrykul but more akin to beasts, they exhale frost even when indoors. Though I do not remember who I am, I feel a sense of sad solidarity at the type of fur that the two invaders wrap around themselves for warmth. Skulls and sinew and feathers hang from their shaggy manes; their weapons are made from simple carved bones and stones. My death ambles over to me in the form of the female, but her red eyes lack menace. The big male inspects the enlightening crystals as if I am of no interest. I do not know whether I should feel disrespected or relieved.

The female looks down at me, breathing frost onto my face. I can not feel it, and she does not simply leap on me as I expect her to. Something is very wrong.

She smiles at me, flashing teeth like a shark and two curved tusks jutting from her upper jaw. I feel afraid, especially because I can not move, but her eyes bear no malice. This is not right.

She raises her wooden harpoon, twirling her wrist as she takes aim at my body. The female handles her weapon daintily, a strange mockery coming from an eater of other sentients. I see the focus in her eyes, as if she gains some sick pleasure out of toying with me. I want to cry but I can not...is this my end? To wake up paralyzed in this hellhole with no memories, only to be murdered unceremoniou-

 _No!_

"Daag!'

She hit me, she hit me, she hit me, she hit me...it does not hurt?

They are so strong...why did it not hurt? I felt only such a light tickle, like a mosquito...it hit the part of my encasing that covers my shoulder...but why did it not hurt?

Why is her harpoon broken?

Why does she keep on smiling?


	20. Acceptance

As unceremoniously as they enter, the ice troll couple leaves. I am alone for a time, though I can hear their voices as they converse with others of their kind down the hall. To keep the door open, they drag the big, fat corpse with many arms into the doorway so it remains propped open. The iron door tries to close of its own accord due to the function of the coiled spring, squeezing the pink body until its contents spill out. It is a disgusting scene...but I lack the focust to be disgusted.

I feel...I am almost embarrassed of how I feel. But I am alone...what does it matter? I should not feel shy to say that I feel disrespected.

I know they can see me...the female looked right at me. She looked right into my eyes. She tried to hit me and broke her weapon. But...they left me alone. They did not eat me or even acknowledge me, as if I am a part of the furniture. Despite my amnesia, I know their kind. They are people who eat other people, and if they do not eat you, they sacrifice you to their gods. For them not to attack me is strange; for them to not even acknowledge me...

Despite all that has happened to me, what I feel welling up inside of me is undeniable. And if I am truthful...the knowledge is not new. This has remained with me for a while...and it hurts. It hurts so badly. It hurts so much more than anything else.

I am not breathing. For however many months or years I have been awake, I have not been breathing. Or eating. Or moving.

The nerubians...these dead looking nerubians...performed what they referred to as a process on me. I am a specimen...was. They are double dead now, unable to explain to me the details. But I do not need them; when those two ice trolls ignored me, and called me a cat goddess...I knew.

The depression crushes me with more force than my still, unbeating heart can bear. And even when I hear the voices speaking Zandali up the hall again after more time passes, I can not bring myself to even react or care anymore...because the truth of my existence is inescapable. And that truth, more than anything, kills what semblance of a soul I might have had remaining in my undead body.

I drift, and no longer seek an anchor. To even wish death upon myself is redundant...I am the worst of all beings. So severe is my mood that I barely even notice when the ice trolls return.


	21. Taste

Depression is broken by the voices. For how long I slept, I do not know or care. It does not matter anymore. None of this matters.

The door has closed even further over time. During my slumber, the corpse propping the door open decayed even more, and the force of the spring powered door forced it shut even further. More of the disgusting contents of the corpse spilled out, but they have long since dried. I hate to look at them; to do so makes me feel as if I am part of a mass grave, or a heap of bodies. Maybe I belong in such a place, but if so, then I do not wish to acknowledge that fact. My experience has forced me to concede to so much...I desire at least some forms of denial to cling to.

The voices are accompanied by another language this time; one that I do not entirely understand. Some words are familiar, as if I have heard it spoken before but not at length. The person is hurt, but obviously not being brought here for the purpose of healing. The ice trolls are dragging him judging by their barked instructions at each other. And then...I feel it.

Like the nerubians. They were not normal nerubians; they had...power. Energy. I could sense it, and one of them in particular burned with it. I do not know what that energy is, but I sense it...and I feel hungry. My depression falls to the wayside as I hear the voices right outside of my chamber.

The scene is not familiar, but I do not feel surprised yet. The ice trolls lead a vrykul in chains into the chamber; he does not look undead like the nerubians, but he is obviously no ally to his captors; he looks like he had been involved in a battle, as does one of the two ice trolls dragging him inside. Two more of the beasts wielding spears file in, and then...the person of power enters.

Not undead, but it is power all the same. An old ice troll, grey and skinnier than the others, creeps inside. He is hypnotic; his eyes glow like those of the undead, but this is a new type of power...I can not take my eyes off of him. He glows, leaving an iridescent trail of energy behind him as he walks, but he does not seem to realize. My insides churn and turn as I find the slightest of twitches in my jaw muscles, and my thoughts become fluid and malleable.

The vrykul struggles, but I almost do not notice at first. The old witch doctor begins to recite something in his poor Zandali, the words lost on me as I watch the opalescent dust like material wafting in the air behind his hands as he talks in an animated fashion. For a few seconds it seems like the captive might escape when he elbows one of the spearmen in the jaw, but another one of them hits the man in chains in the back of the neck, knocking him down. It is an awful sight that should have frightened me; all of them are bigger than me, the vrykul resembles an ape and the ice trolls are beasts incomparable to any other, but I do not feel fear.

Not yet...but in the high induced by the power bleeding out of the witch doctor, I almost do not notice when he pulls out the dagger.


	22. Sacrifice

Unseen by the others inside the chamber with me, the waves of power flow out of the witch doctor. He does not seem to realize how much of his energy he sets loose even by waving his hand during his long, meandering speech. Trails of it wave around the still air, unaffected by the physical world around them. Gravity does not pull them toward the ground and the movements of the spearmen do not push them around; they are not gaseous. Something else entirely.

Every particle within them glistens at me, blinking and dancing around, all for me. I wish I could move and pounce upon them, roll around in them, suck them in through by mouth and blow them out through my nose. Thoughts over my condition and captivity melt away and for a split second, I swoon inside of my encasing and fear that I will topple over. That is not possible, of course; I am held in place by forces I do not understand.

The vrykul is pulled into a kneeling position by his captors tugging on his chains. I should react more strongly, but something foreign is affecting my brain. Light blue light crackles in the eyes of the witch doctor, mesmerizing me to the point where I do not notice the way he holds the dagger beneath the neck of the vrykul. At least, not until he drags it across.

Drags it...across?

The dust floating around the room becomes less apparent to me when the blood spurts onto the floor.

Eww...eww...eww! What is he...no! No! Eww, oh Titans no!

My hypnosis wears off when I realize what they are doing. Disgust finally rises within me, not due to the gore so much as the intent. The vrykul falls and bleeds out quickly, almost decapitated by the sacrificial dagger. The ice trolls flip his dying body onto its back, like a medical...eww!

Eww eww! No, stop doing that! Why can I not close my eyes! No, no, I do not want to see this! They are...no no oh Titans no, for the love of all that is holy stop! Do not force me to look at...eww!

The witch doctor reaches inside to...oh, revolting! Why is he putting that in a bowl?

No...eww, you devil, get away from me! The spearmen are all prostrating themselves, humming in a low tone as they bow down and pray to me. No, I am not a goddess, stop doing that! Stop...OH DEAR GOD GET THAT BOWL AWAY FROM ME!

The witch doctor is...please, help me, somebody get me away from these people! I do not want your offering, stop!

I can finally feel nerve endings throughout my body as I shiver, cursing my existence as I realize I am unable to look away. So much blood...I remember hunting and skinning hares, but animals are not people...this nauseates me.

When the ice trolls finish their disgusting ritual, any intoxication I might have felt from the power bleeding out of their leader is gone. He looks up at me after praying to me, and then turns to his companions.

"We succeed...cat goddess accepts. Bring the others...and the young ones."


	23. Maniacs

Fear grips me for the next day. I know a day passes, because this time, I can not simply sleep the time away. The cat goddess accepts...the last words of the witch doctor echo in my mind for the whole period of time. Even when more of the ice trolls return to clean up the mess left by their ritual, I can not rid my mind of the words.

What is it they believe they can achieve by doing this? Why do they think I would accept this?

Hours tick by and my anxiety only increases. From what I can hear, it seems that the ice trolls have settled down into whatever place this is and occupied it. I can hear them hit the floor at night and stir as they wake in the morning. I try to occupy my mind by imaging where I am, and what place has become my prison...an abandoned fortress, perhaps? The visual aesthetic of the brick wall, the door and the enlightening crystals are...my amnesia prevents me from remembering exactly, but I feel like it belongs to the Titans, not the nerubians.

The entire hall outside becomes unusually quiet...I feel uneasy. The ice trolls have cleaned out all the corpses and propped my chamber door open with a wooden pole at the top of the door frame and another one at the bottom. I can see them pass by with increasing frequency, and I begin to worry. When the female who first discovered me enters with another bowl and the sacrificial dagger, my anxiety shoots up. She lines the room with candles and lights them before leaving, and there is another period of waiting before the chanting begins.

Up and down the halls they come, filing in and lining the walls as they kneel. Their eyes are different, as if they have inhaled herbs, and I want nothing more than for them to go away. More chants ring out and the sense of power tickles me, but unlike last time, I do not want it. The witch doctor enters, leading more of his people in behind them. The ice trolls enter in a hexagonal formation, and in the middle I notice who appear to be two children. Even for a people as beastly as them, the differences are clear.

Both have seen less than ten summers; I do not know how I discern that, but I do. One of them is a girl, shy and uncomfortable around the males as if unused to them. One of them is a boy, undisciplined as he shyly gawks at the women who walk by. They are both so young...underage...they are brought to kneel obediently before me and I can see that they are too young to marry each other, yet they kneel together before the bowl.

The witch doctor chants while waving his hands, radiating power so strong that I experience difficulty focusing. One of his hands bears the same curved dagger he used to sacrifice the vrykul before as he approaches the two underage children...virgins.

Virgins...sacrificial dagger...lit candles. They...no...

...no...

...no! NO! No, you maniacs, these are children!

The chanting grows louder and with it my fear, my disgust, my rage. The two children make no move to resist as the witch doctor slowly waves the dagger in front of them, and I fight with every ounce of willpower left in my soulless husk to protest. I want to stop them, to scream with the loudest voice possible to **stop** this, I do not accept this! Not for me!

The chanting grows louder and the eyes of the witch doctor burn brighter. I panic, struggles to move my eyes but nobody notices. An incredible heat rises in my cold shell, unlike any sensation I remember since my undeath and a few of the ice trolls bowing down and worshipping me stop and take notice. More energy emanates from the witch doctor, trickling through the air and toward my mouth. Feeling returns so fast that I grate against my own throat with every ounce of my being, trying to voice the moral outrage I feel at what is unfolding before me.

"Hhhhhrrrrrrnnnnnn!"

Silence. Every single person in the room stops chanting at the horrendous, ugly sounding voice, and my panic attack only accelerates when I realize that the repulsive sound came from me. The energy waves begin rushing away from the witch doctor even faster, and the entire area lights up in my vision from a source I can not see. The ice trolls, hulking, massive brutes even down to the daintiest female, scream in horror and stampede, and even the two children escape in the fray.

It is all happening too fast. Sensation rips through me and I like it, want it, need it, and I scream again as more of the energy waves shoot into me. The witch doctor burns alive, smoldering and melting in a disgusting mess as he is the last one to escape, but not before the energy becomes blinding and he is knocked against the stone wall beyond the chamber door. The screams die out as the ice trolls escape and my world turns white.


	24. High

**A/N: just a transition piece between the third and fourth arc. I know posting this separately sort of drags things out, but it felt necessary for the sake of the story.**

 **No, she's not out yet...remember: fifth arc.**

 **In other news: I'm currently working on chapter 63, and once we're into the fifth arc, most of the chapters are full length. Just to give a little preview of what to expect.**

High...

...high...

...I feel so high.

Never in my short existence would I have expected such an incredible feeling. Never in my...my...

...where am I...I do not care.

Floating in the clouds, soaring through the air, I can feel myself so high. Energy infects every aspect of my lucid dream. Even though I know it is not real, I do not care. I never want this to end.

All my worldly constraints are lifted because of that sweet nectar of the cosmos...that mana from heaven...

Mana...I know what that word means...vaguely, oh so vaguely, I can recall general knowledge. Specifics of my own self are gone, but I know from general knowledge what that is. I know it as an outsider; whoever I am, I have never known it first hand. Not until now.

Light as a feather I drift, savoring every microsecond that the energy lasts. Physical and mental intertwine, my body and whatever undead possess in place of a spirit phasing in and out as my core shifts in between swooning inside of my encased shell and flying through a holy air.

Gone...my anger...my sadness...my loneliness...gone. This makes up for it...please...I feel the end. The energy dissipates over time, unused and dwindling. Please...why so soon?

Why can I not be like this forever...


	25. Descent

**A/N: the story is officially finished. I finished chapter 65 a few days ago, officially making this the lpngest standalone story I've ever written. Chapters progressively get longer from here, up to a 7,000+ word behemoth toward the end, as Rahotepa's world consciousness sharpens.**

 **As for this chapter, then it's the beginning of the fourth arc...aka: Rahotepa learns Common.**

Sweetness...pure sweetness...how I love you so.

You linger for so short a time...fleeting...mocking. You go unused, and so you dissipate. Disappear. Go to waste. But while you are here...I feel so good. I want it, I want it.

Those bricks staring back at me...I do not care. They do not annoy me...at least not for the time being. But when I am awoken...I feel so relaxed. I take my time observing my surroundings. For the first time in the only life I remember, I do not feel irritated at being woken up.

The candles have long since gone cold, a testament to the foul rituals of the ice trolls. A curved sacrificial dagger lies on the ground in front of me, so close to where I assume my front feet are that I can barely see it...I still can not move. Beyond the dagger, I see...

...ew...

When the magic of the witch doctor left him and...entered me, I suppose, he was hurt. I can remember...yes, now I remember. He was burned without fire. Most of his mana bled out into the air around us, escaping my sucking grasp in an inefficient manner, but that bleeding hurt him. Singed him. Melted him. His leathery hide looked like the wax of the candles, like dried liquid the color of his icy blue hide and his magenta trollblood. And now it is on the floor of my cell...old. Aged. Dry.

For how long was I knocked out?

The door is still propped open by their wooden planks...I can see the wall of the hallway outside. And I can hear that I am not alone.

Yes...I woke up! Why did I wake up?

Footsteps...frantic footsteps of people who are fleeing in mortal terror. Small people with small feet...wait, how can these people be so small?

Wait...why are they speaking Vrykul? Vrykul are not small.

I am not fluent in Vrykul...not like Zandali and Nerubian. But I know enough somehow, from my former life. Enough to know that...on second thought...this is not Vrykul.

It sounds like Vrykul...so very much like it, but softer and more poetic. It lacks the harsh KH sound. Who are these small people?

I hear...I know a few words of Vrukul...the little feet are so close...is he shouting "in here"?


	26. Little

The little feet run faster, rapidly approaching my cell. They do not shout so much as they whisper very loudly. My interest is piqued...the nerubians are gone. The ice trolls are gone. Everybody was gone. Who is chasing them?

Very faintly, off in the distance, I can hear metal clanking against the ground...like feet made from iron. But iron is only used for tools...who would wear iron on their feet?

The words that seem like Vrykul but are not really Vrykul sound relieved and exhausted. Weary travelers who are small...the enlightening crystals inside my cell cast enough arcane light in the hall for me to see the first of them as they come.

What...is this creature?

Dressed in fur like a tuskarr, a vrykul trips and falls into my cell, shouting for his companions to follow. A male, because he has a mustache, but...a child? A vrykul child? He is so short...shorter than me for sure, even though I do not know what I look like. A bag full of gold spills onto the floor...it is so strange. Gold is so worthless...it sticks out of rocks in the ground. Why would the tiny vrykul have a bag full of shiny rocks?

He scrambles to his feet and waves for his friends to follow him inside, his movements panicked as if they are running for dear life, and I begin to wonder who is chasing them. A second tiny vrykul stumbles inside, this one a woman and similarly tiny and wrapped in furs. There is blood on a knife sheathed at her belt. She crawls into a corner and hyperventilates.

As if these people could not get any weirder, the last two enter, and are even smaller. One of them, another woman, is very wide with broad hips and talks with a funny accent. The last one, a man the size of an infant, grips an oversized sword with runes etched on the blade...I can not read them due to blood stains.

They urgently hiss at each other as they remove the wooden planks that the ice trolls had used to prop the iron door open. The spring triggers, and the door begins to slowly close; they all tremble as the footsteps in some other part of this place become more rapid.

They are closing themselves inside with me, but do not notice me. The door shuts entirely, and they seal themselves in my cell. Do they not realize that they have built their own coffin?


	27. Strange

The mustache'od man crawls into the corner and tries to calm down the woman, who appears to be in the verge of a seizure. I understand, via my broken Vrykul, that the man is trying to calm the woman down. Some things do not need to be translated.

Both of them look dirty, and the woman especially is covered in blood that is not hers. The other woman - the even shorter, wide woman - drags the bag of worthless rocks into the corner with them. She appears to be trying to calm the taller, thinner woman as well, but there is no way I can ever understand her accent. The tiny, tiny man with pointy hair rasps for help with the rune etched sword and they all help him drag it into the corner with them. If they are trying to hide, then I do not really think that huddling in one corner or the other will help them.

But I can not tell them that, nor can I communicate; all I can do is observe. I sense absolutely no power...

...well, from them. Whoever is chasing them nears...I have no means of discerning how close their pursuers are, but I feel them drawing near. The entire group tries to hush the less short female until she finally grows quiet, and all four of them cling to each other. I feel sorry for them even though I do not truly know the situation.

Outside...oh my. I feel it. I feel...them. The pursuers. Exactly three of them. And their power...their power! They practically bleed it into the air! They...oh my! They are undead, like the nerubians.

Like me...

Angry speech outside prevents me from wallowing in self pity. Speech like my four cellmates; not Vrykul, but close enough for me to understand a few words here and there. Not enough for me to really follow what they are saying. But they are angry. I sympathize with the fear of my cellmates.

The three powerful, probably undead, beings outside confer with one another as they march up and down the hallway outside. They are searching...I think I understand. The runeblade that my cellmates brought inside must belong to the three beings outside.

For a good hour they search up and down the hall, and I even hear them banging on the iron doors. But their patience must be short, because they leave after less than two hours. I do not think that my cellmates move a single time while the search is underway. And for a good, long time thereafter, the four hapless, unusually short semi vrykul hold still, even breathing quietly as I feel the tension melt away only partially.

Why is everyone who comes in to my existence so strange?


	28. Warmth

I have spent nearly an entire day with these people, and I am already questioning their mental competency.

At the very moment at which I can hear their three pursuers leave this place through a heavy door on a different level, they start to behave like children despite the less short man's mustache. Even the woman who had apparently stabbed somebody joins in as they yank the bag of shiny rocks open so quickly that they damage it.

In awe after having remained without stimulation for so long, I find myself observing everything about them: their words, their body language, their interactions. Even if I can not participate, I just feel so happy to see people communicate with each other again. Happy and a bit jealous.

They spend a great amount of time counting out their gold nuggets and dividing them equally, even falling into heated debate at times. It makes no sense...gold is the least valuable of all solids. Even ice is more useful than gold. Now, quartz - there is a solid one can rely on.

Listen to me...Titans...am I happy?

For so long, I have felt sad...sadder than sad. As worthless as gold. But to see these people here, even if they look like deformed, malnourished vrykul, uplifts my unliving spirit. Whoever these people are, I can tell that they have traveled for a long time and struggled hard. I highly suspect that they are thieves, but considering my situation, I am inclined to lean toward the notion of people redeeming themselves. Even when they can no longer contain their digested sustenance and excrete waste in the corner behind me, I can easily forgive them. Though the fact that I have no sense of smell might be what makes that forgiveness so easy...

These people care for each other, on some level. The taller woman and man do not look related, and the two shorter people look like an entirely different subspecies of being, yet they are so close. And although the person I once was has been lost forever, I feel a...trigger. A reminder in how these people treat each other.

They sleep on each other for warmth - at least, I assume that is the reason since I feel neither hot nor cold anymore - and remind me of something I can not actually remember. I feel it.

I watch over them the entire time, able to force myself into unconsciousness but not in need of doing so. Even in their sleep, I observe them, wondering for how long their food and water will last before they try to escape.


	29. Laborious

We reach the third day, and I feel like I am starting to understand these people to an extent.

On the second day, they had realized that they are locked inside here with me. I wanted to tell them, but I am not able to do so. They panicked at first, but the shorter, broader woman calmed them down. Her accent is impossible to decipher, but I understand her to have directed them toward an escape plan since they were no longer being pursued.

Slowly but surely, they collect the aged wooden planks that the ice trolls had used to prop the door open. The broader woman shows them how to wedge the planks in between the box that contains a spring and the wall. I think...I think they plan to break the spring box so the door opens again. It is ingenious, and more clever than I would expect from most of the vrykul.

But these people are not vrykul...as I begin to decipher their language, that becomes very clear. These people are like civilized pygmies, and even their speech is clearer. I feel as if I know Zandali and Nerubian due to observation; I can not explain this, but I somehow know that I am not literate. But since I do not need sleep even if I am capable, since I do not grow tired, since I do not spend time consuming sustenance or excreting, I devote all my time to comprehending these people.

They did not eat frugally enough on the first day, leaving them in a quandary. Despite their lack of organization, I watch them laboriously work out a system for stretching out their food and water supplies. At three days in, they work out a system for their provisions to last for another three days. I can not understand entire conversations yet, but I can understand that much of their speech by now.

My own fate is unclear...when they do finally pry the door open, how will I talk to them? None of them acknowledge me at all; I must not look like a normal person. Like a goddess, instead...like a statue. I find myself praying for the first time in a long time, hoping for them to escape but also for them not to leave me here.


	30. Desperation

On the fifth day, I can feel the desperation hanging over the group.

Only the patience of the shorter, broader woman keeps the others in check. She is quite interesting...from what I can understand, these people all speak some sort of dialect of Vrykul but they are a different variety, for the lack of a better term. The broader woman directing them appears to be called a 'lochmodan.' I only know this because of her companions; her own accent is still indecipherable to me. The very, very tiny man is from some race of people apparently called 'pipsqueaks' while the two taller individuals (they are still smaller than me) are called 'westfalls.'

My own theory is that they are all regional varieties of vrykul...I have no real basis for this theory. In the bank of memories in the back of my mind, however, there is some sort of residual, retained knowledge that causes me to think this. These four are more civilized, though.

Slowly over the past two days, they have been working on driving the wooden planks between the wall and the iron box at the edge of the sliding door. Every so often there is a noise from somewhere else in this place, and they freeze in terror. I sensed undeath when their three pursuers were here almost a week ago, but the footsteps were not those of nerubians and they were lighter than ice trolls. Every sound is just the weather or a harmless animal, from what I can tell, and the group of four returns to their laborious work.

They are quite meticulous. The lochmodan ensures that they never rush, and I can see the care she takes about the edges of the plank and the stability of its center. She occasionally helps the two westfalls, and the pipsqueak keeps the others comfortable by preparing their rations.

At the end of each day, they take turns dispelling their bodily waste in the corner, which I imagine is starting to smell by now. I see them as they work, I see them as they eat, I see them as they sleep.

But most of all, I feel them. I can imagine that these are people with checkered pasts but they persevere; they want to survive. They console each other, hug each other and even weep together sometimes. I watch them in their slumber at the end of the fifth day, and I notice that their rations already ran out.

I can not let these people die. I will not allow it. I know how horrible that is, from experience. But what can I do? Until now, they do not even know that I am looking at them.


	31. Malnutrition

At a week and a half in, the group has begun to collect condensation from the walls in their container. They call it a waterskin, and apparently the water they collect is dark and smelly but they have little choice. At least I am able to understand such detail in their speech after only ten days.

One of the wooden planks broke a few days ago. The male westfall cut his hand on the spliters, and the female westfall scraped her knees when the force of the break knocked her down. I felt so, so bad for them...misery appears to have set in, because the female began to hyperventilate again even though a knee scrape is simple. The male did a poor job of attempting to calm her down and the lochmodan literally shoved him away.

The glorious picture I had painted of them in my mind has been tarnished. I do not want that; I believe in their ingenuity. There has to be a way for them to escape this place, but only if they believe in their hearts that they can.

More than anything, I want to tell them that they can do this. To tell them that they can not give up. I wish to speak...to speak. I want to talk. During odd moments of the night, I fantasize about trying to use my throat muscles again, but the memory of my voice when I scared the ice trolls away haunts me. If I can scare beasts, then I will certainly scare normal people. I am trapped by my own apprehension, only watching.

Dinner has become less pleasant. Previously, I could listen to their conversations about their plans and the world. Without anything else to do, I was able to analyze every syllable and phoneme, and I learned so quickly. That is not the case anymore.

Much of their clothing was eaten first, after which they started to excrete waste less often. When they began to eat the leather garments, they stopped performing that act in the corner at all on some days. The lochmodan in particular is suffering: she appears to require more sustenance than the others. All four of them are deteriorating in health and in spirit, yet I feel they are so close to escape. They have three more wooden planks; they can do this. They have to.

That night, I notice the male westfall clutching a nugget of gold. Why do they want a rock so badly if they can not even eat it?


	32. Cannibalism

Something is wrong. Something is very wrong.

I noticed it during their big sleep. I call it their big sleep because I have no internal biological clock. I have no idea how I know what that is, but like my senses of taste and smell, I know that it has been lost. I assume that they sleep at night.

At some point, the lochmodan stopped moving. Her ample chest used to heave up and down, and that heaving had become even more noticeable due to their starvation. The cessation, however, must have been so subtle that I did not even notice. For the longest time, I sit in denial, hoping that the leader of the thieves is only holding her breath. I do not know them in truth, and they seem to think that I am just a statue, but I feel a solidarity with them due to our mutual captivity. When I finally accept the fact that she died in her sleep, my sorrow is crushing.

For hours, I wallow. What else can I do? I can not even move to hold her one last time. Even if they do not know me, I would cradle her if I could. The act feels like it would be familiar to me.

When the others wake up, they spend far too much time wailing. Their clamor grows until the pipsqueak tries to shush them, worried that their noise will attract predators. I can see that in spite of the lochmodan's broadness, her wide ribcage had begun to show; they all ate so much of their own clothing that they were all nearly naked and exposed to what I assume is extreme cold.

When they mourn, their weakness shows. They are all thin, pale and have dark circles of malnutrition beneath their eyes. They can not even thrash their limbs with any measure of real power, and instead just in effectively wave their bony arms for a few minutes before growing tired. And then...the female westfall claims they will not have the strength to open the door.

"We need Betsy," she says, and it is the clearest understanding I have had of any full sentence so far.

They need...oh no...

...no...

...no! No, no no, not again! Not this!

I know...I know that they are starving but...no! No, please let there be another way!

I feel pressure behind my eyes as my useless, defunct tear ducts become slightly stimulated. Unable to abandon the lochmodan in her final moments, I torture myself by watching her companions fall upon her.

The male westfall is the only one who hesitates, but even be stops weeping eventually and takes part in butchering their former leader. Like a crazy person, he apologizes to her corpse as they turn into beasts like the ice trolls, feasting upon another sentient.

I want...I want them to survive. They are the closest thing to friends I have ever known in my short, miserable undeath. But not like this...why like this?

I work the muscles of my face, unbeknownst to them, and over twenty minutes regain enough movement to close my eyelids most of the way. Even if I can not rid my ears of the sound like crunching lettuce, I can at least shield my eyes from what little semblance of hope I held for the world outside being butchered in front of me.


	33. Crushed

For two days, the two westfalls and the pipsqueak feast upon the lochmodan's remains and drink the dirty water from the walls of the cell. The effects on their health become apparent by then.

The pipsqueak appears to be the sturdiest despite his diminutive size. Although he appears to have caught a cold like the others, he is less exhausted and he excretes waste more regularly. He takes over the job of directing the other two as they continue trying to pry that box off od the door. Every time they work, they require more time to rest afterward, and their movements lack power. The pipsqueak lacks the patience of their former leader, and frequently shouts.

The two westfalls are in much poorer condition. The male shakes uncontrollably most of the time, and often cries for no reason. The female often goes to the same corner she had sat in on the first day and hugs herself while rocking back and forth. This is the folly of cannibalism: all three of them appear to have neurological problems.

The corpse of the lochmodan is a flash point. The female westfall wants to move it behind me, but the male becomes upset whenever she tries. All of this wastes energy, and they lose precious time while eating skin and yelling at each other far too loudly.

Throughout the entire ordeal, I sit there in the back of the room. I have stood by these people every step of the way, hoping and praying for their salvation and my own. And just like the case of the lochmodan dying in her sleep, I find now that denial is my friend. I am able to pretend that nothing is awry for the longest time, but the deterioration of the three thieves' health eats away at my resolve.

I put my faith in them. Ever since I was raised from the dead, all I knew before was contempt from the nerubians and savagery from the ice trolls. In these people I found my only example of kindness and caring. I also found my only hope for escape...my reality can never be forgotten. My existence is one of neverending observation of nothing, now that my captors have been killed and theie killers have been scared away. My world ends at these walls, and when I realize that we might truly be stuck, I feel the depression roll over me like a tidal wave again.

My crushed hope was easy to ignore when I was merely observing...even after the death of the lochmodan, I could bury the pain I shared with them. I could pretend that it did not exist.

But when they finally break the iron box off of the wall and find that the door does not open...and when the clicking sound of a locking mechanism echoes from the other side of the wall...I feel all of our hearts break together.


	34. Despair

After two weeks of work, the iron box on the wall was pried off the edge of the door. The wooden plank the two westfalls were pushing cracked but did not quite break, leaving the box to tumble across the stone floor. A mess of springs and gears slide everywhere, laying to rest any thoughts of prying the iron door open from the inside. At some point, the ice trolls had pulled closed the peeled corner of the door, thus removing even the possibility of the pipsqueak squeezing through to explore outside. The sound of an iron bar slipping into a hole echoes in the hallway and seems to bounce up and down the stone corridor for hours.

But the span of time is not truly hours; it is only a few seconds before both of the westfalls sink to their knees. For the longest time nobody speaks; even the pipsqueak just slumps against the far wall, overtaken by an expression of fatigue as if he had been running for a very long time.

The female westfall speaks first, and her voice carries a clarity that scares me.

"That's it, then...we wasted our time from the very start. There's no way to open this door from the inside."

No, it was not a waste of time. I want to hug her so badly, to tell her that they tried their best.

The male shakes his head. "Maybe we should've just let those death knights kills us...it would've been over fast and easy. We're going to starve like this."

Please, do not say that! It is not over until you give up...please, let me believe in hope! Let me believe that perseverance yields salvation! I feel myself trembling inside of my encasing, but not from fear.

The pipsqueak does not speak, only slumping against the wall as statuesque as I imagine myself to be. The two westfalls are left in the center of the room, dividing up the remaining pieces of cloth since the lochmodan has become too stiff to cannibalize. Their limbs move like lead, yet trembling, and I see a sort of resignation settle in. I can feel it settle in.

Their hope is gone, and so is mine. I had no plan, really; I do not know how I could possibly communicate with these people without scaring them. What could I have done? Released that horrible, ugly sound from my throat once I saw them leaving? That surely would frighten them away from me. They would run away and leave me here...perhaps I could have eventually found a way to move more than my eyeballs and eyelids, but there is no telling how long that would take.

And why bother? What is there for me out there? I do not even know what 'there' means. I would just run blindly into the same harsh world that chased these people into this place, without any kith or kin. Who would accept me? Even the ice trolls, apparently, hate the undead.

No, there is no hope. Not for these people, and not for me. This was all a lie that I tricked myself into believing. I am a fool.

After gagging down some string and pieces of their shoes, the two westfalls go to sleep in the center of the room. The pipsqueak never moves from the wall, though he is still breathing.


	35. Broken

**A/N: violence, murder and suicide triggers here.**

During that next big sleep, I notice the female westfall stirring. She slept closer to the male that night, as if it would be their last night in this world. Living off of shoe leather and dirty water, it was only a waiting game. Some people, however, are not willing to wait.

Slowly yet surely, she creeps out from under the arms of the male, unaware that I am watching. Inch by inch, she slips away until she can crouch in front of him, gazing at him with a strange look in her eyes. Trembling hands reach for the bloody knife on her belt, and I feel myself seize up inside.

"We're going home, Steve," she whispers with a crazed look in her eye. "We'll finally start a normal life...we're going to go straight."

Panic rises up within me as she aims the knife. In my brain, I understand that she is having mercy upon him: he will not need to spill her blood or his own. But even if my heart no longer beats, I can not accept this. My dead soul will not allow it. Out of nowhere, beyond my own control, I terrify the male into consciousness and send the female tumbling back.

"Hhhhrrrrrraaaaa!"

My roar comes out smothering and gurgled. My throat muscles have only been used once, and that was a long time ago. My lips feel mostly closed, muffling the sound. But my voice is powerful even if atrophied, and it is much louder than feels normal.

"What - what's going on!" the male gasps as he struggled to lean on his elbow.

He is too late...I am too late. The female leaps on him like a savage beast, stabbing him in the chest. The blade pierces all the way through, and he only resists for half a second before looking her in the eye. He is in excruciating pain, but he does not try to stop her anymore. He lowers his head, wincing in pain but holding her blade hand gently.

"I'm coming with you Steve, I promise," she tells him, tears streaming down her cheeks despite the insane smile on her ashen face. She holds his gaze until he passes on, all the life gone from his empty husk. In one final act of release, she turns the knife on herself.

I have the wherewithal to wince, both at the violence and at the disrespect. Perhaps that is selfish of me, but...

...I roared at them. The male was afraid, but the female was too crazed to react. They ignored me as if I am just a noisy statue. Even in her last moments, the female pays me no mind. It is as if I am just an artifact.

Stirring at the far edge of the room catches my eye. The pipsqueak stands up, and for the first time in the two weeks or so that these people have been here, I feel acknowledged. Unfortunately, it is not in a good way.

Despite the starvation, dehydration and cannibalism induced nervous tick, the pipsqueak musters a scowl at me. Anger and accusation burn in his eyes, and I feel fear for the first time in a long time again. He knows I am here; he knows I am undead.

"You did this," he hisses, his words cutting into my heart in the most painful way possible.

I wince, feeling a similar pain to what the westfall must have experienced...why is he treating me like this? I did not do anything wrong! I tried to help!

The temperature of the room must have risen from the tiny man's fury. "You've been watching us the whole time, haven't you? You've been...you turned us all against each other, didn't you?"

No, no do not say that! Do not talk to me like that! I am innocent, I swear! I wanted to go with you, to help you live! Please do not tell me these things!

"This is what you wanted all along, isn't it you monster?"

No! NO! I am not a monster! I am not I AM NOT PLEASE DO NOT SAY THAT, I AM A GOOD PERSON!

The pipsqueak takes the knife into his hands, hard determination burning into his eyes. Even when I gurgle more of my ugly sounds at him, he does not hesitate for one second. He glares at me one last time.

"May you never be found by anyone else! May your evil be sealed alone in this little room forever, you cursed obsidian destroyer!"

I am broken. Broken by this tiny little man the size of an infant. As I weep openly for the first time, without tears but choking out horrifying monstrous sounds, the last member of the group drags the knife across his own neck.


	36. Blood

Blood.

Everywhere, there is blood.

I try to close my eyes, and the blood is still there. I force myself into unconsciousness for what must be at least a week, but the stains wait for me and greet me when my eyes open.

The cold air preserves the four bodies, and the absence of flies means that they lie mostly in state. I have never seen a fly, but I somehow know what they are, and there are none here. The corpses darken and shrink, but even the mostly eaten body of the lochmodan remains almost as it was at the time that the world ended.

That is what happened: the world ended. These people were not merely possible helpers to aid in my escape. They gave me hope that not all people are cruel, that not all of them enslave others, that not all of them butcher others. And as I sit here, unable to avoid the accusatory gaze of the dead pipsqueak, I can feel my hope drain away. Only now do I realize how hopeful I truly was, for long ago did I sink beyond what I had expected to be rock bottom. Truly, I did possess a chance if I also possessed so much hope. So much lost, in that case; so much gone to waste.

For the first day or so, I pass the time by daydreaming about what the world would look like. Maybe if the iron door did not lock, and the four small vrykul offshoots did not fear me, and we all find a way to escape together. We would frolic and be happy, like a weird little family, and no more beasts or people with metal shoes would chase us.

By the second day, I count every single blemish on the bodies of the two frozen westfalls; I already counted every stone block in the walls and floor long ago (seventy that I can see, likely a hundred and seventy total). I estimate the relative size of their fingers and toes to each other, and try to daydream what a half westfall and half nerubian baby would look like.

Beyond that, I lose track of time. The only sounds are the occasional echo of an animal walking by the outside of whatever this place is. From time to time I cry, but I hate the sound of my voice so much that I try not to.

In time, I had expected that the pain would lessen, but that is not the case. Not by a longshot. I never grow into a gentle numbness and the boredom tears at my spirit just as fiercely as the despair. For a time much longer than the gap between the coming and going of my waves of different visitors, I hear not a sound. Perhaps I could try to flex my muscles, but why?

Where will I go?

What will I do?

Who will I befriend?

I am a monster; even the pipsqueak, in his desperation, still chose not to ask me for help or communicate with me more than to make me hate myself. He did not want me. I would not want me.

Misery is my existence; that is all it ever has been. Even my previous hope was tinged with doubt. After such a long time spent sitting...I come to a resolution.


	37. Solipsism

None of this is real.

The room, the place, the visitors...none of this is real.

Of course...why did I not realize this before? This was all a figment of my imagination, self made to entertain existence itself.

The nerubians turned me into a monster, and then left me here. I could not even get a proper look at them.

The ice trolls worshipped me, calling me a cat goddess, yet I could do no more than stoke their superstitious backwardness.

The small vrykul that were not really vrykul came, lived and died entirely beyond my control.

Because none of this is real. How could I not see it before? There is no smell, no taste...well, I physically felt the ice troll hit me with her harpoon, but I am sure that there must be an explanation for that.

There has to be. There is. Because if there is not, then I truly am just a damned, forgotten statue cursed to live alone. And that prospect is so utterly soul crushing, so oppressive, that my still heart can not bear such an existence.

And so...I will not believe in it all. I will believe what I want to. I am the cat goddess, the one true being who creates these nightmares in a lonely, empty vacuum of anti universe. I am a monster; I am sick. Perhaps the fact that none of this is real is a mercy to the beings that have never truly been...because this world is so ugly, so cruel, so barren of love that I would never condemn anyone to live in it. Not even a theoretical being.

Perhaps even I am theoretical. I can not, technically, prove that even I am real.

Let me sleep; let me cease. Reaching down into my core, I tug and pull until I extract a deep, blissful hibernation. It is a slumber that will not be woken until something real reaches out to me; something that isn't as hateful and cruel as this despicable world which I want no part of.

Sleep...forever sleep...please...do not wake me...just let me be the statue. Alone, lifeless and waiting for nothing.

Because I am nothing...and that is all that exists.

 **A/N: and so ends the fourth arc of our story, on exactly the note I wanted. Next begins the fifth, the final, and the longest arc. Due to narrative, I've divided the fifth arc into two halves: the Zeppelin, and the Frost Wyrm. Make of that what you will.**


	38. Wake

**A/N: this is the beginning of the fifth and final arc. The first half is titled the Zeppelin.**

I open my eyes.

I do not need rest, but my mind feels better.

Before me lay the frozen remains of four people, enchanted lighting crystals and that locked iron door. That same door.

I groan inside. Why am I awake? I swear, if I lose my ability to simply hibernate the time away, I will flex my muscles until I can move and bludgeon myself to death against the wall.

I do not even bother flexing at first, though. Not even my eyebrows or eyelids. If a noise woke me up, then I will just need to force myself asleep again. How annoying...this was a waste of...

...what...

...the...

...it is looking at me?

Not smoke...not a gas. The entire room is lit by those crystals, leaving very little shadow. Yet suddenly I see one pass ovee the floor. There is light shining there; nothing is blocking the light. Why is the shadow moving...wait...how did it slip in the gap at one corner of the door?

The shadows twirl and rise up off the ground...not solid, liquid or gas, yet they are no longer merely cast on a surface. The move into the empty space on their own and merge into a condensed blob of shade. Shade with no sun. From the ball, I see two balls hover on the floor among the twirling, but not smoky, shadows, and two more balls at the sides. Another ball forms on the top, with two glowing red dots on it.

And it is looking at me.

What sort of nightmare is this?

I seize up again when I hear more feet outside. Feet of different sizes and textures. What...is...this?

The voice of a westfall echoes in the hallway, giving me another shock.

"Ihsan, stop wasting time! What's in there?"

People. People here. People talking. Oh...what? Am I dreaming again?

The condensed shade levitates off the ground somewhat, hovering close to me...those red dots are eyes. There is no denying it.

Oh...oh! Oh my...! People! Please...please let this be real! Please let it be the sound of people that woke me up from my slumber! Oh Titans, oh Twisting Nether, even the Old Gods, whoever is listening, please, have mercy! Do not let this be a dream!

The shade floats around me, looking only at me, interested in nothing else. It is the most attention I have ever received.

"Barghash...I think you'd better see this.

"I think checking the final chamber hasn't been a waste after all...there's actually a destroyer in here."


	39. Dawn

My condition has changed my entire nature, and I notice it even through my excitement. My heart beats no longer, so I feel no adrenaline, but there is something...moving...inside of me. It moves in reaction to the presence of these people.

Is it...oh my...oh my...calm down...I have to think...I can not lose this time.

So...so...okay. This thing, this shade, is alive. I am beyond caring about what it is; it has eyes and it speaks, even without a mouth - at least, not with a mouth I can see in the darkness. Whatever, I do not care. This thing is not a thing; it is a person. I think that I heard a name mentioned, along with feet. I count...five. Five pairs of feet, all of them possessing variant sizes, weights and constrictions. This is another diverse group, like these frozen, rotten corpses on the ground in front of me. I do not know who the frozen corpses are. No. I do not. I do not.

Huh? No, wait, _wait_!

"This thing is the real deal; I don't think it's just for decoration," the shade says, it's voice shockingly close to the sound of a westfall.

The voice that sounds like a real, actual westfall sounds skeptical, which immediately caused me to panic when coupled with the sight of the shade going away. "This entire expedition has been a bust...if we find something now, as we're leaving, it would almost seem like a cosmic joke." It is a man, and a very serious man at that. He sounds less pleasant than the shade, like a taskmaster. That thought causes me to shudder, though I do not know why.

I...I am going to have an anxiety attack...please, do not leave me, weird people!

"Serendipity smiles!" cackles the voice of a pipsqueak. I do not understand what she means, and I am bothered by her voice. It is...not normal. Warped. Gravely. That means...

What I hear next causes the movement beneath my hard skin to cease, as if I am sick even though I doubt I could become sick in my state.

"The lock has been broken from the inside," says a...oh no...a nerubian. Her voice is not warped or distorted like the ones who brought me here, but she is a nerubian...wait...speaking that odd language similar to vrykul. Why is a normal, healthy nerubian talking like the westfall and pipsqueak?

"We can fix this, then. Hey...rip off the hinges of the lock and the bar at the other side of the door," says the westfall. He must be talking to someone else...I do not think the shade is the one who will rip...

Oh no...

Big heavy footsteps thud on the stone floor as the person being ordered to rip the door comes. I can tell...wide feet...heavy weight mostly on the ball of the foot, splayed out. Splayed out...like...two toes...I already feel myself cringe again. Please, please, why does it have to be another ice troll?

With a loud metallic screech, I can hear the hinges being ripped off of the door. I am nervous, but not afraid...I would say that I am prepared to die at this point, but something tells me that I will not.

The heavy iron door falls to the floor alongside the locking mechanism and the iron bar in the outside. I look at the people who are either my saviors or my executioners, expecting to find another living ice troll and pipsqueak and undead nerubian to take me away. Yet when they step out from the side of the door frame, I see a living nerubian and an undead ice troll and pipsqueak. And then the others...what...who are these people?

The westfall steps forward, wearing the skull of a goat as a mask. "By the shadow," he says, looking right into my eyes.


	40. Contact

I...I do not understand these people. This is so strange...it does not make any sense.

Hypnotized, I stare at the thankfully passive intruders. The presence of the nerubian upsets me at first, especially when she climbs onto the ceiling in order to make way for her companions. But she is very much alive...I sense energy in her, latently, but I assume she is simply a gifted person who never cultivated her talent.

Her friends...no, they are something else. I do not know who to be bothered by more: the pipsqueak, who is wearing a child's dress but was most definitely an adult at the time of her undeath, or the ice troll, who is covered in the bandages of a mummy...which is familiar to me, so very familiar. So familiar that I want to shudder in my encasing. But the small amount of hide I can see is sickly green, not blue...he scares me, but so does this little pipsqueak with the wide eye. There is something wrong with her judging by her jerky movements.

I sense the power of undeath coming from them, also latent but undying; they feel like...generators. They can not compare to the two others, though. The shade is like energy without a body made from matter. His movement is distracting to me, and I feel that deep pull in my core as he floats around in front of me. Like I feel difficulty paying attention to anything else, until the westfall comes.

The westfall is burning. I can not see it, but I sense it inside of him. Even if I do not feel comfortable with the others, I feel like I want to just be next to him. He is warm; my cold, lifeless body feels nice simply standing next to him. He wears the robes of a mage but light metal armor of a skirmisher; I can offer no explanation as to how I even know what those things are. But the goat skull on his head...those horns...they mean something. He scares me and entices me at the same time, and when I look at his eyes, I freeze. There is not much for me to freeze aside from my lips, eyelids and eyebrows, but I do.

He turns his head, revealing kinky hair and skin the color of coffee beans. "Two months on this expedition and we found nothing until now...it seems too good to be true. There has to be more to it...are you sure that it's functional, and not just a statue?" He speaks to the shade, and the two stand shoulder to shoulder while the others either guard the door or inspect the room.

The shade hovers a little closer, tickling me with power. "I see no traps or trickery here; the only question is whether we've stumbled upon the real deal or not."

"We'll need to test it, to see if the thing functions or not," the westfall says. I feel offended; I am not an 'it' or a 'thing.' My displeasure must have shown, because I notice the westfall tense up and grip the curved sword hanging from his belt. "Ihsan...aren't these things supposed to be mindless automatons?"

The shade - Ihsan, apparently - floats around me, inspecting the back of my head. Indignance, self consciousness and hope all battle for control of my heart as I find myself becoming a specimen. My heart sinks, to an extent; that is how the undead nerubians viewed me. Is this...is this the same? Am I just an object to these people, too?

I receive another shock when the westfall brushes Ihsan aside, knocking pieces of the shade away like rays of anti light. A stare as intense as the energy burning inside of him pierces me...pierces me in a way I have not known since waking up in this place.

He looks me in the eye...he is looking right at me. Stripped naked, I find myself pushed in a way I have not known. He forces me to look back, inspecting me silently and ignoring the insane rambling of the undead pipsqueak. Inside, I clench, almost touched despite the fact that I do not know who this person is. Eyes that appear cold and stern soften ever so slightly, and I find my eyebrows trembling with emotion when I realize that he knows.

"Ihsan...I don't think this thing is mindless."


	41. Communication

I can remember the sensation of attempting to speak, even though I can not remember having tried. When the westfall looks at me, I can feel a sensation in the same spot, but much stronger. It is like a force pressing inside of my throat, trying to get out. Like a lump. Nobody looks at me...I am a statue. I am part of the background. I am forgotten.

But not by this coffee colored westfall wearing a goat skull as a mask. His eyes lock on to mine, and I feel him probing me. Not with his energy; no. This is very personal. Almost normal. It is the most sincere look I have ever received, even if the person giving it appears to be rather dour and unkind. I feel as if he forces himself to be kind against his nature.

He lifts his index finger and holds it between my eyes, making me dizzy as the shade continues to inspect me from angles I can not see. The westfall moves his finger to the left and then to the right, allowing me to follow with my eyes. Despite my near paralysis, I feel my eyebrows arch into a frown. He notices.

"Ihsan...this is no automaton," the westfall says. His expression becomes disappointed, which on a person like him is intimidating. "Damnit."

The nerubian woman, who heretofore had been clinging to the ceiling with her spindly legs, gave us an upside down look that immediately upsets me for reasons I do not remember. "What's the problem? You order Bhaya and Dak around. This...erm...thing could just be ordered to come back. Mission accomplished."

The nerubian has excellent diction in what obviously is not her language, I will concede to that. But I am slightly bothered by her comment. Order me around? Mission? In my desperation, I expect that I can easily accept indentured servitude if it leads to my escape from here, but that realization makes me feel so low.

"Bhaya and Dak are semi sentient; like thunder apes. They're easy to command but also follow by choice. But... _she_ ," the westfall says, and my heart would flutter if I had any blood, "is a sentient being. Her soul's sympathetic vibrations are too strong."

Out of nowhere, the pipsqueak jumps out from behind the non icy troll guarding the doorway. She terrifies me this time, especially when I notice that her bangs had been covering the fact that she was missing an eye and half of her face had been frozen and then cracked at the time of her mortal death.

"Ask and she shall tell, praytell!" the tiny person cackles, sending a shiver down my spine in the most visceral reaction I can remember having. Even the nerubian seems to find her creepy, which makes me feel a bit better.

The shade hovers back in to my field of vision, floating in the air between the pipsqueak tap dancing on the ground and the nerubian clinging to the ceiling. As if deputized, the westfall looks toward Ihsan as if seeking confirmation, though the mass of shadows does not have expressions that I can discern.

Bearing neither fear nor condescension, the westfall walks closer to me, like he does not want the others to hear. His energy warms me again, almost giving me a light buzz due to proximity. Though he is not mollycoddling me, there is a sincere shine to his eyes.

"Greetings...my name is Barghash. I represent a certain...man of science, among the Forsaken. We aren't Scourge. I don't know the circumstances of your...condition. But I sense a soul in there; I can see that you weren't always this way. I'm guessing that the Scourge did this to you, and trapped you in this place.

"We won't - and likely can't - force you to come along and meet our...our...client, so to speak. You're free, at least as free as one can be in your situation. You may go where you wish. But if you wish to cooperate with us, then we can provide you safe passage out. I won't lie...we blocked the entrance behind us, but you'll be knee deep in the enemy out there."

I hang on every single word he says, mesmerized that a person is _talking to me_. Me, he is talking to me. Before he even finishes, I can hear the ugly sound of sobs deep in my throat, like a lost hiker when they are rescued after weeks stranded alone. I try to nod, but my neck is stiff, and so I arch my brows again. I try to force my throat to speak the word for 'yes' in his language, but it comes out as a gurgle.

Shocking me beyond belief, the multiple eyes of the nerubian furrow sympathetically. "That's a yes. That's definitely a yes," she says to the applause of the pipsqueak.

The westfall steps back. "Wise choice...but hurry. We've tarried too long. Let's get you out of this room. We don't have much time."


	42. Breakout

After more weeping in my part, the entire group sets to their tasks. They function as a team, and soon enough my curiosity impinges on my tearless joy.

Ihsan leaves for some reason, this time pushing his way through a solid wall to the side after a measure of difficulty. The pipsqueak, apparently named Sweetiepie, was ordered out after him; she does not seem sentient like him. Good riddance; she is the most terrifying thing I have ever seen. The nerubian patrols the hallway along the ceiling, leaving us mostly alone.

Immediately, I am treated to the horror of the non icy troll trying to eat the corpses that what the hell he is trying to eat the corpses! What! When did he start trying to eat dead people!

Fearless beyond what I could ever hope to be, Barghash actually raps his knuckles on the sloping forehead of the oddly green troll. "Dak, stop! We need those!" Without any complaints or sound at all, the beast apparently named Dak rises, a big alpha sort of creature wrapped in bandages. "Her platform has been latched to the floor; rip it up while I raise these. We'll need all the canon fodder we can get."

I do not understand so many of these terms. My understanding of the language is workable, but much of the vocabulary is lost in me. It becomes clearer when I witness it...the power.

Barghash raises his left hand. He wears light metal armor, like a battlemage, but his left gauntlet is different: there are rings built in to the gauntlet. The energy is burning in them too, like a sort of filament along all four knuckles, and his energy funnels there.

Hypnotized. I find it so hard to focus on what he is doing...I feel intoxicated for a few short moments. A squeal of disappointment escapes my unbreathing nostrils when he stops, but my attention is drawn to the frozen corpses. Much like the bizarre pieces of meat shaped like monkeys that had aided the undead nerubians, the four bodies that had mysteriously shared the chamber with me - I honestly have no idea who they are, no no - rise. Rotten, stiff, decomposed, and disgusting beyond all belief, they lurch in jerky stopping and starting movements on their unnaturally twisted limbs in the most unnerving motions my nightmares could have conjured. They are all small, but I could envision even a magnataur cringing at them. They are so awful on a level even Dak and the psychotic pipsqueak can not match.

I can not watch them leave, because the whole world shakes. Not the world, I suppose; me. Dak blocks my view as he hunches over and pulls at something beneath my field of vision, and I hear the screech of metal again. I am dragged, and a mild panic attack settles in until I remember that the brute appears to be under the control of Barghash. Once he puts me near the door, Barghash directs him outside and then turns to me.

This time, his look is more curious than empathic. "Can you float?" he asks me.

Flattered as I am at finally being consulted directly, I can not help but feel pressured. When I was brought to this place, the undead nerubians had floated me. I do not know how...wait.

He grabs one of the enlightening crystals from the corner behind me and holds it up. I feel...energy. I feel...warmth. I feel...so stupid.

Could I have tapped into these the entire time?

He does not need to tell me. I breathe it in, barely noticing it disintegrate into glowing dust due to the immediate burst of energy. I almost feel dizzy from it, like I am floating, until my head actually hits the ceiling and Barghash backs away. Reeling and confused, I sink back down until I feel the block that my legs are encased inside of thump on the ground, sending vibrations up through my haunches. The nerubian returns looking concerned.

"What's going on?" she asks, again shocking me by how normal she behaves.

Barghash ushers her out of the chamber in front of him. "It's time. We found our destroyer, recruited another body, and confirmed that the Drakkari left nothing else here. Come on...we can bring her up to speed on the way out. The Alliance forces are probably rallying again by now."

Fear grips me momentarily at the mention of the Drakkari tribe, though I calm down when I realize that they are not the ones outside. Everything has happened so fast. From the time these people discovered me until now, when I find myself high literally and figuratively, could not have been more than half an hour. I am a leaf in the wind, being blown this way and that. I cling to these people because they are nice to me now, but the truth is that I still have no idea what is going on.

As they direct me out into the hallway - my legs are apparently stuck inside a block of solid material - the entire building shakes. I do not even get to look to either side and inspect what had been my tomb before I hear the sound of stones being smashed. Barghash and the nerubian both draw swords in reaction...why can I never find any peace?


	43. Talent

For a few seconds, I am able to view my tomb. Outside I am in a curving hallway that wraps around a building, numerous other iron doors smashed all around me. Whether that was due to the Drakkari or my current saviors, I do not know. At the far, far end, I can see the supposed entryway...my heart sinks after having been uplifted by my high. Violence plagues me wherever I go, it seems.

The end of the hall looks like there has been a cave in; rubble and blocks of stone from the ceiling seal most of the entryway, though the rays of sunlight alert me to the breach. I cringe mentally at the sight happening before us.

These enemies that Barghash spoke of are trying to break through. They look like armored westfalls, though some of them are of varying sizes, and they can not squeeze through easily. Lining up for the slaughter, many of them push their weapons through the rubble only for Dak to grab their arms and pull them through, greviously injuring them in the process. He then casts the crippled enemies at the four animated corpses, who tackle and then eat them. It is a gruesome sight even if the people who are winning are, technically, my rescuers.

Barghash stays by my side, much to my relief. There are some qualities you can recognize even in a stranger; one of them I see in him is that his enemies probably have more reason to fear him than vice versa. I almost fear him when I hear the hard edge in his voice. "Purbas, that's the only way in - see if you can climb above them and provide an extra pair of hands in case too many breach the barricade."

The nerubian - Purbas - crawls to the ceiling and down toward Dak silently, her twisted short sword in her hand. Out from the solid granite wall, Ihsan pushes his way to us, straining as if fighting against a gust of wind.

"I took a look outside - they healed up and regrouped. Nehekaia is determined - she brought two death knights and a whole unit of footmen. There's a priest next to her. That's assuming she hasn't called for reinforcements."

Too many names! I can not follow what is happening, and all of it without my involvement. I hover more closely to Barghash, begging for some information. He notices me from the corner of his eye, and speaks in greater detail perhaps out of pity.

"The ghouls will occupy the footmen - for the death knights to fight for control of them wouldn't be worth their time. Ignore them, and if you can, distract the priest - Sweetiepie will make short work of them and cackle all the way. Purbas and Hondakai can easily handle the death knights two on two."

"And Nehekaia?" Ihsan asks.

"Leave her to me. Just spook that priest the best you can."

"I'll see to it." The shade promptly sped down the hallway at a shocking speed, moving right through the disgusting minions apparently called ghouls and squeezing out a tiny hole in the rubble barricade. When the pipsqueak races past from behind me, I realize that the horrendous little nightmare is Sweetiepie. How inappropriate.

Mentally exasperated after half an hour of consciousness, I rotate my base as well as I can to face Barghash in the hallway. His curved sword is still wielded, and he appears to be waiting for the pile of stone rubble to give way. Screams echo beyond the barricade when the shade and little nightmare run amok among the enemies, reminding me both that the world outside of my tomb is so close, and yet another hostile group of strangers stands in my way.

Barghash looks at me. "I'm sorry we must meet under these circumstances. I can promise you that our client doesn't generally send us into such...disadvantageous situations. Suffice to say that we'll help you to your freedom if you help us. The person outside is...quite powerful. I'm going to need your talents to deal with her spells."

Talents...me? I do not even know who I am. I can not do anything. I can not even move from this encased block. I wish I could help...but what does he want me to do? Why can I not twist my mouth free to ask him?

My thoughts are cut off by the sound of a blizzard outside that starts and stops in a matter of seconds. A boom rings out as the rubble is knocked away, maiming most of the ghouls in the process. Through the icy mist at the entrance, I can see more armored westfalls rushing in at us.


	44. Ultimatum

The shouts echo on the walls as the rubble is blown away. The ghouls are knocked to the floor, their already misshapen bodies even further crippled. Intelligently, Purbas hugs the ceiling to make herself a smaller target and I even notice Hondakai back up. Even considering the small stature of westfalls, the shouts of the intruders frighten me; I back up even more, slamming into a wall in the process. My fright is only momentary, akin to jumping at the sight of a cockroach. But I do not remember the feeling of mobility since I first reawakened into the world, and at that time I was disoriented and assisted by my captors. I struggle to regain control of myself, succeeding somewhat even as I despair at the unfairly familiar sense of hostility I feel from my whole world.

Barghash remains in front of me, no longer paying as much attention to me before but I do not mind. He yells, so fast that I can not understand him - I am still not an expert in this language. Responding to his words unflinchingly, I see Hondakai block my view of the entrance, hunching over and stretching his arms out so none of the westfalls can pass. One by one, Purbas stabs downward and dispatches the intruders quickly. I am so tired of the violence, but I know there is little choice. If these people are my saviors, then my salvation is tied to theirs. The concept of killing to live is not alien to me or who I once was, but my mind has been so taxed.

Eventually the intruders understand what is happening, and they hold outside. There are more shouts alongside the maniacal laughter of Sweetiepie, and I force myself not to think of what she is doing. Barghash moves forward, pushing on Hondakai; the monster moves aside for him and I am hit by that energy again. I understand clearly who is the leader here when Barghash raises his left gauntlet and raises another group of ghouls from our former enemies...I know what he is doing based on logic, but it is not familiar to me. This does not remind me of anything...the armored ghouls snap to their feet, lurching and jerky, very much unlike Sweetiepie and Hondakai, who themselves are...they are not like me at all.

"Purbas, take Dak and get on those death knights...you know what to do!"

Both the living nerubian and the undead green troll rush outside, leaping out to the sides where I can not see them. The light of day stings my eyes at first...and it is the most lovely sight I can remember seeing. Even through the battle cries, the sight of the snow...the green pine trees swaying in the breeze...

...oh...I know what that is...my throat constricts longingly until Barghash backs up and reaches to what I think is my hand, though it is out of my field of vision. "Focus! This is it! This is time! These people are here to take us down - do what you do best!"

What I do best? I can not do anything! I am just a person with no identity, stuck in this chamber, I can not fight! What does he expect...no, he is running outside! He is outside...I...what am I supposed to do? I do not want to be hurt, but I do not want to be left here!

I force myself after him, hoping these people can protect me. The scene is a mockery of my life: the beautiful trees, the snow that tugs at my heart strings so firmly that I almost fool myself into thinking that it will beat again, all betrayed by the skirmish. The ghouls are fighting tooth and nail with more intruders, metal and bone clanging in ways that nearly scare me back into the hallway. I do not even have time to look behind me and see what my tomb looks like from the outside before I hear metal in stone; Purbas spun a web on what appears to be a ghoul in armor, radiating power just like Barghash.

But that ghoul is so different...its eyes shine with intelligence, and it carries a runeblade that looks oddly familiar. I see her wrestle the blade away, but my vision is cut by a second armored ghoul dropping its runeblade as Hondakai beats it all across the stone plaza with his fists in a very one sided fight. All is chaos, especially when I see a strange westfall with long ears and blue eyes struggling against Sweetiepie despite the size difference. Ice shards flow throughout the air unnaturally, nearly shocking me with the raw, beautiful energy. I almost tip over until one corner of my base hits the floor and I accidentally turn around in a quarter circle.

It is like a symphony, it is beautiful, and I lose focus in the din of the battle until I hear the voice of a very serious, unpleasant person. And not unpleasant in the reassuring sense of someone powerful who can shield me from harm, like with Barghash.

"It's over, Forsaken scum...surrender or die."


	45. Fear

I can just barely make out the stone railing of the plaza that we are all standing on, along with the steps leading down into the snow. All else is obscured from my vision due to the miniature blizzard flowing around us, tickling me with its power. It is like a cool summer breeze, like a massage all over my fur coat...I almost wish to hover forward toward the source until I hear that spiteful voice again.

"You've thinned out quite enough of our ranks, Barghash. I'll see to it that you're brought to account for every brave Alliance soldier that fell to your heresy."

The person speaking is a female westfall, and an old one, though there is raw anger in her voice that chills me; the little blizzard floating around us does not. She is obviously the leader of these people losing the fight so badly, and she is trying to hurt my saviors. But nothing could possibly hurt them...they can save themselves, save me, like they did from the chamber-

"Now!" comes the pained voice of Barghash through the little blizzard. He is so close to me, but I can not see him. "Now, eat her magic!"

Is he...is he talking to me? His voice is directed at me, but...his words do not make sense. I do not eat; I am undead. And who eats magic? Does he...is he talking about...the energy? Oh, wait, the blizzard! It is small, localized, and appearing on a sunny day...is this magic?

Why does his voice sound so urgent? Surely, they can-

"It's over!" the angry westfall woman hisses.

The crackle of ice reaches my ears as the blizzard suddenly releases me from its envelope, leaving me to face the image of Sweetiepie screeching and running into the woods, a strange golden light shining on her forehead. The long eared westfall is kneeling, his robe just as shredded and bloody as the flesh of his exposed calves and forearms, but that golden light wipes over his wounds...healing. I know what healing is. I do not see Ihsan, but I see a smoldering black stain that bleeds dwindling shadows. I can only assume that the long eared westfall is the one known as a priest, and that Sweetiepie and Ihsan failed in their task to 'spook' him.

Two of my protectors are gone...both selfishness and empathy well up inside me. Selfishness, because I was given a taste - one succulent yet mocking taste - of freedom, of those...those beautiful rolling hills, only to be dragged away from them. Empathy, because even if I do not know these people, they brought me out with them and gave me promises of a better life without knowing me. They surely want something from me, but that is a fair trade. A trade which now seems further away.

"Quickly!" the angry westfall yells to her minions, no longer caring about Barghash. "Distract the forest troll! Get it off of him, hurry!"

Everything happens so fast that I panic, spinning around in circles on my base. To my horror, I catch glimpses of our impending failure. Purbas left the armored ghoul she had restrained to battle the living westfalls, who apparently overcame our own ghouls. Hondakai apparently snapped the runeblade of the other armored enemy ghoul and ripped its arm off and is beating it to double death with its own arm, only for another gold sigil to appear on his forehead. He freezes, a look of fear written all over his beastly face.

"The power of the Light compels you to TURN!" shouts the priest.

At the word 'turn,' Hondakai panics, running into the woods after Sweetiepie as if he is afraid. He opens his mouth but he is mute, the only sound his big footsteps until they are absorbed by the snow. Purbas tears in to the ranks of the westfalls, sending them screaming from a non magical fear as she cuts them down, only for an icy explosion to freeze her pointy feet to the stone plaza. Nets fall over her...no...nets fall over her, and I feel like I want to cry. Even if she is a nerubian, even if she has eight eyes, it stings my core to see someone who helped me, and who acts so normal, brought down by nets and magic ice and the dog pile of westfalls that pin her down.

There is only one left who can save-

I hear the sound of a finger flicking ice. "Never thought you'd be in such a situation, did you?" the irate westfall woman asks.

Chills run of my spine as I turn to look, watching the woman lean on her staff between myself and Barghash; only now to I notice that she has only one arm, her other sleeve held shut with a metal pin.

Barghash...the leader of these kind strangers...my protector, even if I just met him...

...he is encased in a block of ice.


	46. Captured

Translucent blue forms a block around Barghash, leaving only a small opening for his face and ears. He is alive, but immobile, just like poor Purbas as the westfalls secure her limbs with thick ropes. Both of them were subdued without injury, but to see them like that...bound, helpless, trapped...I start to quiver and shake inside of my encasing, nearly breaking down when I see them in the same position I was in. It is so undignified, so unjust, and I fight to suppress a whimper at the sight of them trapped...just like I had been when they helped me leave.

They are trapped, Sweetiepie and Hondakai were scared away by the priest, Ihsan appears to have been burned by the light. That only leaves...

"Nehekaia, why didn't she just eat your magic?"

The one armed mage turns toward the two armed armored ghoul. She appears angry at him and stares him down, mouthing words that I can not read on her lips because I am not a native speaker of this language. More eyes fall to me and I float backwards until I hit the stone railing. From my peripheral vision I can see my tomb: a huge ziggurat towering into the sky, many stories high and bearing an architecture that feels like a home I will never remember. The sheer height disorients me and I can not escape the oppressive stares of these bad people.

The one armed armored ghoul tries to reattach his severed limb, then casts it to the ground in frustration when he can not. He glares at me while speaking to the one armed mage known as Nehekaia.

"If it's too stupid to fight back, then why should we even haul it in with these two?" he asks angrily, his voice carrying an unnatural, crackling echo to it. He points at me in a way that makes me feel like I am only two cubits tall. "We're the only survivors from the others, let us have _something_ for ourselves!"

Something...thing? He means me...a little surge of anger wells up inside me at how I am being pointed at, though I am still afraid. My saviors are defeated...I was set free only to be captured again. My head would hang low were the movement possible for me.

Nehekaia taps her staff in thought. "Very well...I would have liked to take such a specimen back to the academy for dissection, but we can make a deal. Ebon Hold will be reluctant to lend us more death knights when they find that more of you were lost to these...mongrels," she says acrimoniously; I can only assume that she refers to my saviors. "Take the defective destroyer out into the woods and blow off some steam. I hope that when you return to your organization, you'll explain that the losses were for a worthy cause."

No...

The one armed armored ghoul...death knight, apparently...limps over toward me. He limps even more than Nehekaia due to his wounds, but his glowing blue eyes bear such malice that I spin around, trying to escape. I hear the armored boots of the other one approach and they seize my arms from behind, pulling me toward the stairs.

No!

"Rest assured, captain...we'll deal with the blowback. Just give us a few while we go vent for a bit." They pull me down the stairs, my floating base making their job incredibly easy and my ability to escape nigh impossible.

"We're going to shatter this thing into a million pieces."

Nooooooooo!


	47. Shattered

The two death knights laugh at my cries during the entire short trip down the stairs. My voice is not as warped as theirs, but it sounds worse when I cry due to its power. They are evil, awful people; it is as if they feed off of my terror, yanking and tugging in order to jolt and disturb me as much as possible.

We reach the snow, the footprints of Sweetiepie and Hondakai nowhere to be found. I am pulled in between the trees, further and further away from my defeated protectors. Away from the only beings who have ever showed me any kindness...even away from the ziggurat that was my tomb. Away from all I know, toward scenery that had melted my heart when I first saw it. It horrifies me even more when I am left alone with these devils.

"You really are stupid, kitty cat, aren't you?" the crippled death knight asks. He is behind hateful, likely due to his injuries. I try to cringe from his words, but I simply can not move. "We shouldn't have won that fight."

"Leo, watch it," his less injured companion whispers to him.

They carry me far, far away from the others, perhaps out of earshot. When they find a place among the trees where we can all fit, the stop, and push me into one of the thicker ones. I feel no pain, but I flinch and cry out anyway, still frightened by being hit. The healthier death knight spins me around, his runeblade ready.

"We lost half a dozen of our own to you people," he tells me, sending shivers throughout my very being as he measures the distance in a few practice swings. "I don't know why the Alliance wants your ringleader so much and I don't care; we came here to do a simple job, and we end up losing our and a whole lot of Nehekaia's troops."

I back up into the tree again, and the one armed death knight garners a yelp when he hits me in what feels like my body. It does not hurt, but I can not escape the panic at being struck.

"Get on with it!"

"Here it comes," the healthier death knight replies as if they are simply having fun, and not torturing an innocent person. The runes on his sword begin to glow lightly, tickling me at the worst possible time. He swings, and my throat muscles flex enough to let out a fully fledged scream as the sword connects. No pain, but a large amount of pressure as my encasing cracks audibly, much to their delight. Their eyes glow more powerfully, and the runes on the sword light up more. "Her outer shell is brittle."

"First we crack the shell, then we crack the nut inside!" The one armed death knight punches me in the side, giving me a huge shock when he connects with a limb that is not my leg. I can feel the pressure, but I should feel nothing there; there should not be anything on my back. Nothing makes sense, nothing feels right, and my world is terror and confusion as the two of them wail on me. "It's taking too long, we need to dump her!"

"Good idea!" the other one says as he reads up for a thrust, shaking me to my core as I helplessly try to float away.

The runeblade pierces my encasing and hits the real me underneath. I feel no pain, only a more sensitive pressure, and I know that even my new, strange body inside is very hard and stiff. Do I feel no pain because they hurt me so bad that my body is in system shock? I am breaking into pieces, dying all over again in the most horrifying way imaginable; the lack of pain terrifies me even more as I halfway expect it to start at any second.

His blade stuck in my encasing, the two armed death knight grips the bottom of my base while the one armed devil grips the strange limb on my back that should not be on my back. I try to form the words, reduced to begging after such a long life of knowing only varying forms of despair, but the words are garbled and they only laugh. I tip left, I tip right, back and forth as they struggle with my weight. Sobbing all the way, I flail my limbs as they move me past that tipping point, breaking pieces off of me with a loud shatter.

My arms are folded, sliding in the snow and pine needles under my weight. My head lulls to the side, along with the strange growths on my back. For the first time, I feel my legs limp and flopping beneath me, kicking around in a pile of stone debris. A strange material flakes on my skin, causing me to wince and wipe my face with...

...wipe my face...with my...hands.

"What the fel? Why isn't she broken?"


	48. Empowered

Like a fish out of water, I flop around in the snow, my legs strong yet unpracticed like my throat. Even as I scrabble and kick away pine cones, I do not entirely grasp that I am moving. Only when my feet shift around pieces of the square base that once helped me to float do I realize that I am free. These devils, these people who wish harm to me and my saviors set me free...

...and now they want to end my second chance.

"So she _can_ move after all, just like the destroyers at Ahn'Qiraj!"

The one armed death knight grabs the part on my back...a...wing? I feel like a wing would be there if I had them, yet I do not feel familiar with possession of wings at all. He grunts as if he is expending a large amount of energy on trying to pull me, yet I feel as if he is lightly touching that appendage; it is almost like a joke.

"Seems like she's stubborn now! We'll see about that!" The death knight kneels on my back and slams his single armored fist into the back of my head, moving it forward slightly but not hurting me. I hear metal dent. "What the?"

"Hold her there, I got her!" says the two armed knight. A second later, I turn to see an armored boot coming toward my face. After a miniature panic attack at the sight of being hit again, it connects, annoying me when it slightly nudges my head the other way.

"Stop! Stop it! Stop it!" I shout, not even realizing I said it out loud at first due to the almost hollow sound.

They both hesitate when I speak, as do I. "These things can talk?" the two armed death knight asks.

He does not have a second time to ask. Maybe it is muscle memory, maybe it is a triggered experience from hunting, or maybe I have just had enough. Rising on my clumsy and unpracticed legs, I run, knocking the crippled counterpart off of my back and dragging through the snow what I can see are wings that I do not know how to use. Instead of mounting an offense, I spastically run straight into the death knight, causing both of us to tumble to the ground. He is taken by surprise, and he merely tries to push himself up as I flop around on top of him like a beached trout.

"Light damnit, she's still heavy even without the outer shell! Get her off aargh!"

I am not thinking. My mind shuts off as I pin him, leaning with more leverage than I even need as images of a witch doctor and screaming, superstitious beasts flash through my mind. I open my jaws wide, grabbing the head of the death knight as I search for that sweetness, that high. Using some sort of a sixth sense, I locate it and growl. Too taken aback to mount a defense, he helplessly pushes against my weight, which feels like far too much. I am struck, slammed, obliterated as that sweetness hits me, and I gurgle awkwardly and shudder as if I feel cold even though I do not. His magic flows into me far faster than I expected, making me feel so light headed that I erroneously believe myself to be floating again.

The death knight stops yelling as his pale skin dries out and cracks, all taughtness of his stretched skin disappearing. I drink and eat and leech until I feel the flow dwindle to a trickle, his eyes flickering as whatever energy sustained his undead state disappears. His armor collapses, crushed brittle bones into dust alongside the ashy flakes of his skin because I suck even the undeath out of him.

Power overwhelming, I turn to look at my crippled tormenter. He remains seated, staring in shock at the mistake they made by cracking my shell open. On the ground among the scattered remains of my base lay a crook and flail, even more familiar to me than the ziggurat. Not muscle memory but a hunch leads me to pick them up, causing them to glow as the death knight's weapon had. Power flows out of me into the two tools, a slight emptiness sloshing around inside of me as a result.

The one armed death knight rises and tries to run, all of his former bloodlust and rage disappeared. I aim my tools at him on instinct, feeling the beam between me and him. I do not need experience or explanation to know what this is; I almost grow drunk on the power. All my fear, all my terror, all my panic is gone as I watch the death knight burn in fluorescent green plumes of flame and smoke. He stumbles and then creeps along, thinning out and crumbling into a burning mess as I eat every last bit of his mana. When he possesses no more, the magic maintaining his corpse in its animated state breaks, and he is just another dead body that should have remained on whatever battlefield he had been found on.

The power...the absolute power. I am buzzing, I am hyper, I am ecstatic, I am...

...worried.

They took me here to keep me apart from Barghash and Purbas. The ones who saved me...who promised me safe passage out, and possible cooperation with their client, whoever he is.

They are all I know. All I ever have known of kindness. They are all I have.

Memories of failure to save four thieving travelers driving me, I gallop on my clumsy legs. I was not able to save others before, even if the incident is partially repressed in the depths of my mind. I will not fail again.


	49. Dialogue

The ziggurat dominates the noontime skyline, blocking the sun directly from my view. Trees whiz by as muscle memory truly does start, reminding me of how to run. My wings are a problem: I feel like they should not be there. I drag them through the snow at first, then hold them straight up before finally folding them against my horizontal back. The position feels natural, even if the presence of wings does not.

I feel my stolen mana dwindling, yet I do not cast any spells. It is as if I gradually lose all the mana I eat no matter what I do, and the buzz fades. In a technical sense, it does not matter, but it causes me to run even faster. Once I regain a normal pace, I see the empty plaza in front of the ziggurat entrance and panic.

In one single leap, I find myself up the steps, stumbling in shock at how far I moved. My mana buzzes, likely the reason why I moved so far - I did not actually try to use these wings of mine. My concerns are temporarily allayed when I see my former saviors off in the distance. Nehekaia leads her armored guards in a marching column on foot as they drag the block of ice containing Barghash. Purbas is still bound, but walks on her own accord as a few guards keep their weapons trained on her. A thin encasing of ice coats her carapace, likely numbing her and slowing her reaction time. I feel anger rise up until a familiar voice scares me.

"Nice to see you escaped."

"Gah!" I yelp and nearly fall to the side. Ihsan is there, intact and staring at me. "Where did you go!"

"That priest exorcised me, but I'm still incorporeal; he can't get rid of me permanently." One of the orbs of darkness bobs up and down, as if he refers to himself via the motion. "Why didn't you eat Nehekaia's magic?"

His voice is confused and sympathetic rather than accusatory, but I still feel shy. "I...I have never done this before...I did not know I could do that."

The shadows shift as if Ihsan is tilting his head. "Strange...the obsidian destroyers in Ahn'Qiraj are programmed. But Barghash said you have a soul...I did read about a branch of tol'vir being left on this continent by the Titans. I suppose the stories were true - you're a former mortal, not a construct." I start to shake my head from the information overload, and he takes the hint. "Later. I'll tell you everything later. For now, you need to save the others; Sweetiepie and Dak can track us, but only if Barghash is alive."

I watch the people train stop when they notice us, standing at the snowy horizon and gesturing at us in agitation. "Can you help me?" I ask. Despite the power I feel flowing through me, I still do not know how to fight. Nehekaia obviously does, and much better than the death knights.

Ihsan shakes what appears to be his head. "I'm a shade; I can't hurt others, and aside from being temporarily exorcised, I can't really be hurt. All I can do is spy on and scare people, and the priest obviously doesn't fear me." When he sees me clutch my tools to my chest pensively, he floats into my field of vision. "I'm here; I'll direct you and give you heads up the whole way. But we can't wait; Barghash could catch hypothermia, and Purbas might be summarily executed since she's a nerubian."

He is right. Even if I feel nervous and shaky, he is right. We can not wait; there is no telling what these horrible people might do. With another leap, I bound toward the group of enemies, reaching them in a few gallops. Ihsan is faster than me, and the priest tenses up at the approach of the shade. Purbas is shoved to the ground as the armored westfalls line up to meet me, holding a shoulder to shoulder formation. Barghash languishes in his icy prison next to Nehekaia, who appears thoroughly enraged to see me.

"I should've known better...were those two so incompetent that they allowed themselves to lose to a destroyer that can't even destroy?"

This time, the words roll off of me; I do not care what she thinks. I smell the magic on her healing priest and even more strongly on her, as well as on the ice imprisoning my two protectors. They tried to help me; I will help and protect them now.

Energy crackles as I grip my crook and flail more tightly. The mana I stole dips even further, but some is still there. The guards all hesitate, but they do not seem to fear me. I do not know how to fight, but I will make them change their minds about me.

"Stay away from my friends!" I howl, my voice much more passionate than even I had expected as I charge.


	50. Round One

Nehekaia tosses her head back and laughs, the crows feet on the sides of her face making her experience very apparent. "Right. The destroyer that does nothing more than decorates a room will score one for the Forsaken. Cute." Her gaze turns hard again, her sarcasm too biting and too spiteful to really bear any power. "Deal with this."

A tap of her staff on the ground sends the team of armored westfalls after me, swinging various metal weapons. Ihsan hovers between my wings, whispering into my ear. "Get their priest - he'll just heal the others and drag things out."

Not needing to be told twice, I charge. Barreling straight for the guards, I watch as they try to jump out of my way at the last minute, losing their nerve as I trample a few of them. Nehekaia is taken aback as the death knights were, though she maintains her composure much more firmly. Slipping behind Barghash and the block of ice, she watches as I chase down the priest, who weaves some sort of golden bubble around himself. I kiss the bubble like an actual bubble in a frothy dairy drink and suck it up, even causing a bit of the golden light to splatter like liquid when the bubble pops. The priest is so shocked that he just stands and stares at me as the armored guards rally.

The long eared priest waves his wand at me. "The power of the Light - OWW!" he inadvertently shouts when I hit him with my flail.

The stony links in the strands whack him hard, searing his flesh with green burns. My wrists are limp and the power of my swing is probably much weaker than it could potentially be, but the strike is enough; his flesh starts to melt where I whipped him, and I can see mana bleeding out into the air though others can not see it. Not wanting him to heal, I catch him by the neck with my crook and yank him to the ground, whipping him and drinking his mana as he shrieks until I feel more pressure like a leaf slapping my flank.

"Die, foul monster!" shouts one of the guards as he hacks away at my flank with his sword. It does absolutely nothing to me, and I turn around only long enough to give him a swift kick with one of my hind legs before returning to the priest.

"Watch out."

Too late. Right when Ihsan warns me, I am hit hard on the side, knocking me off of the priest. The force angers me again, and I turn to find Nehekaia - the frail old mage - defiantly standing with two arms. Her formerly missing arm has been replaced by a long limb made of ice and shaped like a club; her rage is unbridled, and she does not fear me at all. The guards charge past her, leaving her and me to stare each other down as they hack and slash at my stony body.

"Stop stop stop!" I speak almost coherently as I undextrously flail my arms at the guards. They are skilled fighters and I hit like a sissy, but the force of my stony body and the burning sensation of my tools wounds them. I nearly kill them, but when I see the damage disappear I growl in the same manner I would have if the wind had knocked my tent over after I spent an hour setting it up.

"The priest healed himself and is healing them," Ihsan whispers from my horizontal back. "Eat Nehekaia's arm, and then obliterate that priest."

Ihsan is not simply giving suggestions...he is coaching me. Accepting instructions from someone more experienced is familiar to me, and I turn back to Nehekaia with glee. Her club flies upward toward my face the moment I turn, causing me to flinch until it melts before making contact with my jaw. Crumbling and breaking into magical dust, the icy limb transfers into a gaseous form and flows into my mouth, nose and even permeates my skin. The entire length of the prosthesis is lost as I eat it in half a second, leaving Nehekaia without a melee weapon. "Pounce!" Ihsan instructs, and my frustration at the man keeping my enemies alive drives me straight into the priest. Like a snow hare, he flicks his legs beneath me, awakening old instincts that remain even if my need for food does not.

I drink his mana, then channel it into my tools to hit him. The armored guards are running to catch up with me, but by the time they arrive, the priest has no mana and is burned to the point of crying like I once did. Good.

I turn around to see all the more than half a dozen guards set upon me, beating me back even though they can not hurt me. I lash out, rolling my arms in a sort of windmill motion like the bullied wimp among a group of children. The strategy works, however inefficient it is, and they start to fall before me. I try not to think about what happens after they stop moving, and I just focus on hitting them until they stop moving.

Another miniature blizzard surrounds me, obscuring everything from my vision. The gale force can not knock me around, but it can certainly disorient me. This must be Nehekaia's doing. "Enough games!" she snarls at me, using a furious tone that should frighten me. Some time ago, it would have frightened me a lot. Now that I can feel her icy blue wall surging around me but unable to touch me, I feel...so strong. Even if I still flinch at being hit and I throw things underhand instead of overhand, I feel the power from the priest, the hardness of my skin even outside of my encasing. I feel powerful enough to save people.

Quite tired of her attitude, I start to suck up her blizzard. I drink it all, finding myself facing one permanently handicapped priest, numerous incapacitated guard bodies and one royally pissed off mage. She aims her staff at me, but I hold out my hand and 'grab' the magic somehow, feeling it pass through my body. Sharp icicles fly at me, only to disintegrate into mana when they approach my stony skin. Nehekaia focuses a cutting beam of frost energy at me, and I walk toward her, the beam fizzling out before it can touch me. My body crackles with energy overload, while she crumples to her knees, panting from manaburn.

Hateful eyes look up at me. "You're still a monster," she hisses, hurting my feelings somewhat. When I pause, she pounces verbally since she can not physically. "In the end, I'm still becoming one with the Light for my noble endeavor; you're still an atrocity forever damned to your putrid existence." A hard, defiant stare plasters itself on her deadened eyes, bloodshot from the complete emptying of her mana pool.

An idea pops into my head as I decide to test my skills. I reach forward, pointing my index finger toward the skin of her forehead. My hand tingles, and I feel as if an avalanche will come shooting out of my finger. All of my stolen mana collects in that one extremity, preparing to be transferred back into a target rather than drained out of it.

"We'll see."

I touch her a single time, funneling all of my stolen mana back into her at one moment. The overload is too much for her body to bear; I feel disappointing emptiness inside after sacrificing so much energy, but a joyous bliss thereafter. The mana overload does not even burn Nehekaia; she simply disintegrates into ice particles, all traces of her ceasing to exist as I shove all my mana into her in a split second.


	51. Introductions

Groans ring out from the priest and the armored guards whom I did not quite kill during my windmill arm flailing. All of my attention is drawn to my formerly trapped colleagues, however.

The moment I disintegrate Nehekaia, her frost traps disappear with her. Purbas shudders as the frost that had been clinging to her carapace does not even melt but vanishes, and she immediately starts to bite through the ropes binding her. Barghash, however, is not in such a relatively advantageous condition. The block of ice shatters into mist, but he was still enclosed inside for a sizeable measure of time. I do not need my memories to understand that, even through his robes and armor, he was hurt by the cold.

I feel the energy in him pulse strongly, and the defiance against nature that I see in his eyes staves my panic. Shivering but grunting angrily, he forces himself to his knees. "Glad to see you managed to break free," he congratulates me, very casually as if it was not the most major defining moment of my life. I guess he has no way of knowing that, since I have not been able to speak until now.

"You...are...welcome," I reply, the words difficult for me to pronounce due to my self consciousness about the sound of my voice. I try to force myself to sound pleasant, but I feel like a child learning to swim.

Ihsan hovers into my field of vision. "You need a curative spell for the frostbite you might've suffered," he tells Barghash.

Despite being burned, smoldering and exhausted, the priest spits out curses at us from the snow. "Monsters like you _can't_ heal; he'll catch a cold and-"

" _You_ can heal," Barghash interrupts him, a steel in his voice smashing the defiance of the priest. "And you _will_ heal."

The priest trembles, his confidence destroyed by two clauses. "B-b-but I don't have any mana anyway! I'm useless to you! And no threat anymore!"

"Not quite." Barghash turns to me from where he is kneeling and shivering. "You...you channeled Nehekaia's mana back into her. Correct?"

He...is asking me? I freeze; this is the first time anybody has ever spoken to me and expected a response. He wants to know what I have to say and what sort of information I could grant him. I feel flattered...I feel like a person.

"Y...yes. I do not know how, but I can give and take mana."

A hard stare, not an intimidating or aggressive one, but a very serious stare locks my eyes to his. "Then take some of mine."

I gasp. "I can not! You saved me-"

"And that's what you'll do now. I'm still a living human," Barghash says, using an odd word as he taps his chest plate. "Basic current flow: consume a measure of my mana, and then push it into this priest here. And he _will_ heal me; I need your efforts if I'm to stave off hypothermia."

Hypo what? He knows more than me, and I feel sad when I see him shiver. I must return the favors he and his companions granted me. "Oh...okay...please, tell me if it is too much," I stammer, more from nervousness than fumbling with my voice.

I tap in to his mana...and it scares me. The power he holds scares me, and the possibility of me overdrawing scares me. I only started to use this ability at will _just this morning_ ; I do not understand it, I am not familiar with it, and I really have no idea what I am doing. Forcing myself to ignore how good it feels to munch on his mana, I cut off the line when I feel the reserves within him dip, and I ungracefully shove that line straight into the priest. I was not paying attention and the delivery of mana to him gives him a headache, but I do not care; he performed something called an exorcism on Ihsan, and the shade is technically the person who discovered me, so I am still mad. Emptiness stings me again and I feel that my mana is gone. During the transfer process, Purbas had bound the few surviving guards and lined up the corpses of the dead ones a good distance away in the snow.

I pull the bloodied priest to his feet by yanking on his neck with my crook. "Help my friend, or...uh...or else!" I do not know how to threaten people properly, but my words are enough, and the priest casts a golden spell on Barghash that does not hurt him the way such spells hurt the others. When the priest starts to heal himself, I lay my flail on his back and drain all the mana out of him again, earning a light buzz as the pointy eared man falls into the snow.

No longer trembling, Barghash stands in the middle of us all; I notice that Purbas and Ihsan wait for him to speak, and so do I. "For those of you who survived, then you will be spared; you're prisoners of war of the Forsaken now. Mutiny or fleeing will result in summary executions. And as for you..."

He looks at the dead as he talks, five corpses behind the three captive guards. When Barghash raises his gauntlet again I prepare myself to bask in the warmth. Bright green light the same color as my tools emits from his hand and into the corpses, causing them to jerk into hideous standing positions as his minions...ghouls, if I remember correctly.

Ihsan shifts and floats behind me. "There are Sweetiepie and Dak." He uses one of his shadow orbs to point in a random direction, where the... _forest_ troll, apparently, lurches while the most terrifying creature I have ever seen rides on his shoulder. I look away quickly, still unable to bear a direct gaze from then traumatizing little pipsqueak yet.

"And you," Barghash says to nothing in particular. Purbas is already spinning the priest in her webs, so who could he be speaking to? "There will be no death for you. Not after you've ended the lives of so many among our ranks."

Reaching into what must be a very large mana pool again, Barghash channels that green energy into a splotch of exploded ice, a very light blue stain that sticks out on top of the snow. Icicles and clumps of snow swirl around, weaving in and out of a dark blue light as a vaguely human shaped thing emerges. Like a dark blue version of Ihsan, the icy shade takes shape, one of its arms a long club of ice. The frost revenant struggles for a moment, its featureless face temporarily molding into the form of Nehekaia screaming angrily before settling down into a mere dark blue orb with glowing eyes again. The priest curses until Purbas lays him down on the ground and spins a thin sheet of webbing over his mouth.

"Now, we have what we need to reach the Zeppelin," Barghash announces in the center of the entire group. Purbas chitters and Ihsan beams with energy for a moment, a stark contrast to the now undead Nehekaia, who appears to abhor her state but can not do anything about it. Even Sweetiepie claps in an exaggerated fashion, causing her mummified ride to clap with her.

I smile until Barghash looks at me, feeling a bit self conscious from all the eyes since the ghouls look wherever he looks. "So, obsidian destroyer...what's your name?" he asks, and I immediately feel so light in the head that I fall.


	52. Join

I stumble back and fall straight through the shadowy, incorporeal body of Ihsan, feeling the barely noticeable coolness of the snow when my haunches plop in it. I quickly try to right myself, suddenly finding my new, jet black body rather heavy. Purbas stands side by side with me; she is lighter, but roughly the same dimensions, and she leans against me so I can stand.

"A little light on the mana, there?" the nerubian chitters at me while straining to hold me up.

"W-what? Well, I..."

As if he understands my apprehension, Barghash stops looking at me directly. I sense no sensitivity of any sort from him, but he does appear to have a measure of respect such that he dislikes seeing an ally squirm. "Sweetiepie, Dak, scout the area."

"We'll earn our badges for 'crazy' yet!" cackles the little pipsqueak as she rides the forest troll in a circle around the snowy, lightly forested area.

"You," he tells the ghouls and frost revenant, "keep the captives stretched flat on their stomachs. Screech if the priest needs his mana drained again." Not even needing time to think, the horrid horrors turn and drag our bound enemies into prone positions, hanging over them in order to keep discipline. With Purbas by my side and all others busy, I find myself much more relaxed, faced only with Barghash not looking directly at me and Ihsan floating around. "Mighty ally, you're totally sentient and in possession of speech...haven't you a name? Is it not true that your kind are former tol'vir?"

I blink at the word he is saying, struggling to comprehend it. "Tol...vir?" I ask in confusion, drawing up a blank. "I...remember nothing. I am a person! I am not a machine! But...I do not know who I am," I sigh, slightly more comfortable without all the eyes directed at me. As shy as I feel to confess that, the reality is that I have been alone, ignored and forgotten for so long that I can bear the discomfort if it means keeping the respect of these strangers.

Ihsan gives me a jolt when I realize that he is hovering above me head. "I checked the records, Barghash. This ziggurat was only used for the production and storage of obsidian destroyers, using technology considered forbidden by Purbas' people. The nerubians loyal to the Scourge tapped into those methods, using mummified tol'vir from their vaults."

I try to pull him down to eye level with my crook before remembering that his body is incorporeal, but he notices and floats down anyway. "Records?" I ask, a bizarre sensation of excitement without blood or adrenaline flowing through me, causing an odd vibration beneat my hard skin. "Records of this place? Of who I am? There were more of us?" One of the enemy humans tries to look up, and screams when he is scratched by a ghoul for doing so. This time I do feel bad for our fallen enemies being beat up, but my eagerness to learn about who I am is too great.

Barghash and Purbas turn their full attention to the shade now, and he begins to ramble. "Well you see, the nerubians keep meticulous records, as Purbas here can tell you - they adopted that from your people, apparently, who were taught record keeping by the Titans. Their architecture is borrowed from the aqir but their education was taken from your people. You see, the tol'vir were bred in two populations-"

"Get to the point!" Barghash nearly growls, showing a bit of the wrath I sensed in him from the beginning.

"Yes, well, the record of every obsidian destroyer ever stored here was written in the upper floor, which was sealed off during the zigurrat's construction; I only fit in because of small, porous air pockets in the cement blocks. The way it works-"

"Please, I must know!" I almost shriek, despairing in part because I have no idea what a tol'vir is even though he insists I am - or was - one.

"Ihsan, do you know her name?" Barghash asks impatiently, though his displeasure is lost on me in my joy at him referring to me as 'her' and not 'it.'

"Yes, yes, I found a record that matches her chamber. Apparently, she was a villager and an escaped slave from a village of tol'vir that the Titans placed so her people could naturally breed and continue guarding relics here without the need for supervision. The name of the village is lost, but her personal name could either be Rahotepa or Raha'otepa - the diacritic marks on the script of Titan used in the ziggurat aren't the same dialect as what I studied. It could be either way."

From the corner of my eye, I can see Purbas leaning more closely to me. "Rahotepa...does that ring a bell?" she asks quietly, her voice soothing even when her appearance still unsettles me.

But I can not focus. "I... _was_ a villager?" I ask, feeling a bit of my hope die inside. I had expected news like this were I ever to escape, but nothing could prepare me for the time when the news finally came.

For a good few seconds, all eyes are on the shade, his expression unreadable due to the lack of features other than lidless and browless eyes. "According to the records, you were one of the early individuals embalmed and permanently preserved in volcanic glass, and which the Scourge later unearthed and enchanted into said existing volcanic glass with their anti magic magic. I memorized the date and I'll need to run a conversion once we return to the lab at Brill, for the calendar differences...but based on my preliminary estimate, you and apparently half your village died in a blizzard roughly sixty five thousand years ago."

My reaction must have been apparent, because Barghash immediately motioned for Ihsan to leave. In my rapidly blurring vision, I can see Purbas hugging me. "It's alright, Rahotepa - hey!"

Despite my newfound clumsiness, I still manage to cause Purbas to stumble as I flee, gasping despite not breathing as I galloped in the nearest place with heavier woodland that I can see. "Damnit, guys, give her some space!" I hear Barghash shout at the others as I run, weaving in and out of the trees the best my heavy, uncoordinated frame will allow. Pressure mounts behind my eyes as I feel tearless sobs threatening to claim me again, and I try to run away from pain that already clings inside of me.

My front leg hits a root beneath the snow and I trip, falling haunches over head as my L shaped body tumbles down a steep hill. I crash into a snow pile near a riverbank, causing a mild explosion of the white powder that scares some small trout away from the spot. Even if I no longer breathe, I still experience vertigo, and I take a moment to roll around in the snow before I remember which way is up again after my slide. My wings flap against the ground, entirely unfamiliar and possibly not even mine originally; I have no way of knowing, because nothing that Ihsan claimed was familiar to me. All I know is that I am lost, an amnesiac with only a name and a death date from so long ago that for sure all the people who once cared for me are long gone.

Covering my upper body with my wings, I clasp my hands over my face before remembering that I have no tear ducts. For the longest time I just lay there in the snow, wondering if this new group of people grew tired of me already. It would fit the general pattern of my existence.

I dig my fingers into the snow, unaffected by the cold as I drag myself over to the edge of the water. On such a clear day, my reflection is very easy to see. At least I can say that my time spent frozen like a statue, unnoticed by people or worshipped by them, plus the revelations about my embalming, all cushioned the blow. My face is made of moveable stone like my joints, colorful and adorned with a nemes made from copper and several varieties of softer metals colored like gold but not gold. I spend a long time staring into that face and those eyes...

"I do not know you," I whisper to my own reflection.

As if I could not become any more cliché, I actually slap at the reflection only for it to reform and stare back at me again. Left alone to my own futility, I find a way to fold my wings against my horizontal back again, hugging myself around my vertical back and staring blankly into the water. I wish I could think of some sort of a plan, of how to maturely react to being an amnesiac, but the reality is that my mind was empty. I was more like a statue then than any time when I had been trapped.

The reflection of Barghash appears next to me; he can not walk softly if he tried, but my situational awareness had bottomed out. Dragging a log next to me, he sits down and I find him at my eye level. I tremble, wondering what sort of hard talk he might give me about moving on; even if he chooses to, I must listen. I am trapped...I am still a slave. Because if I leave these people, then I have nothing. Breaking free from my encasing was not what I had thought it would be.

He speaks without looking directly at me. "I can't pretend to understand what it must feel like. I've seen it before, including among those you've met here...those whose lives have been taken by the Scourge rarely find their new powers to be to their liking." When he notices the inquisitive look I give him at the sound of that name I keep hearing, he tilts his head toward me. "The Scourge is...an entity. A force of nature that's against nature. They take the lives of the living and assimilate them into the ranks of the undead. I use the same magic, of course, but never to take the life of someone who doesn't deserve it."

He is so strange...all of them are. They were clearly searching for others of my kind, yet all of them have treated me as an equal in the brief time I have known them. The ghouls are clearly viewed as different from them...me...us. Were Barghash to abuse me, I might actually accept it simply to avoid being alone. Whether he is aware of that or not is beyond me.

"Why did you save me?" I ask, immediately regretting my verb choice. As if I am not in a weak negotiating position already.

For the first time, Barghash removes the goat skull he wears as a mask. While I know next to nothing about humans, I can see that his skin is young; much younger than the scowl he wears. That expression softens a bit, though, as he watches both of our reflections in the water.

"Our client is a man of science; all the world is an experiment to him. We know of the power of the obsidian destroyers, but those in Ahn'Qiraj are loyal to the few remaining qiraji. Since the small handful of those in Northrend were loyal to the Scourge, we assumed that my necromancy would be able to bind one to be loyal to us. We didn't realize..." He paused to grumble for a moment. "Ihsan neglected to mention - throughout the entire flight here - that those of you on this continent are not machines. We came seeking another minion, like the ghouls; we didn't realize that you're a person."

For what feels like the hundredth time on this fateful day, I can feel something inside of me clench and release. My existence has been entrapment from the beginning, and all that happens around me has not been my choice. For him to call me a person means almost as much as setting me free.

"Thank you," I tell him, quicky pursing my stony lips thereafter for fear of becoming too emotional again.

Without his mask, he seems different. More open perhaps, or more relaxed. We spend a decent amount of time sitting, and the others do not approach. It feels nice...I never thought that silence and solitude could actually be desirable things before.

He turns to look at me finally, the cruelty which I feel is so strongly is bound to his nature melting away when he speaks to me.

"Rahotepa...I told you that you're free to go once you're out of this and I meant it. We're going to return to our client and report our findings, both here and elsewhere. Probably bring Nehekaia in as a specimen, too. You're free to follow us until the end and decide where you want to go, either at a Forsaken city here or across the ocean. I won't compel you, because you're clearly sentient; even Sweetiepie and Dak are below you.

"But if you agree to come with us, and join us as a companion on our team, I can promise that you'll have a home. Your talents will be of immense interest to our client, both because he wanted the aid of a destroyer and because you're clearly intelligent. Your help will earn you the loyalty of myself and the others forever. You'll have a place to belong, which - no offense - you don't have here. All of your race in Northrend had gone extinct, either wiped out or turned into destroyers. And so far. You're the only one we've encountered that is sentient. So-"

"I ACCEPT!"


	53. Belonging

After calming me down to the point where I can talk like a mature adult again, Barghash leads me back toward the others. I still feel residual embarrassment from having run away like that, though my primary consolation is that the enemy humans were laying face down in the snow at the time. Nehekaia witnessed my episode, and I can feel the outer sparks of her magic fighting her necrotic leash the entire time, but apparently revenants can not speak. Purbas and Ihsan witnessed my embarrassment as well, but thankfully say nothing about it. Sweetiepie and Hondakai returned once we arrive, and appear none the wiser. Nor particularly wise in general.

Purbas is busy trying to engage in some sort of discussion with Sweetiepie, thank the Titans. I really do not want to deal with the terrifying pipsqueak right now.

Ihsan hovers in front of Barghash and I and floats backwards as we approach the group. "Finneas fired off the signal while the two of you were gone," the shade tells us, his bizarrely normal sounding voice tinged with worry. "He and Zulgha must be concerned."

"They both know that the signal will attract attention...if they were the ones in trouble, we would have seen more, however. They must have assumed the worst. We need to roll out."

I do not know these people they are discussing, nor do I know what precisely we are to roll, but the insinuation that there are even more people beyond us helps me to relax. Restraining my curiosity, I wait for Barghash to lead us to the center of the group; he appears to be waiting for everybody's attention, but I can not focus when the priest is that close to me. After silencing Sweetiepie, Barghash notices my nervousness and points toward the pointy eared priest.

"Please keep his mana pool as empty as possible, if you could," he asks me quietly, much to the priest's chagrin.

"Devils! Monsters! The power of the Light argh ack hack ack," the priest gurgles as I drag my flail across his back and his bound arms, soaking up his mana with the numerous hard tassels like a mop. A pleasant buzz settles in between my eyes, but this time I do not swoon; I think I can get used to this sensation.

Covering the intact side of her brittle face, Sweetiepie leaves the side that looks like shattered glass open to us and I cringe. "Eye eye, captain!" she cackles, sending even stronger shudders down the spines of the captive humans than the rest of us.

Nodding once he had the attention of us all, Barghash became serious, his mask hiding whatever residual softness I had sensed from him a few minutes ago. "Although this is a bit belated, I think a greeting of our team's newest member is in order. I trust that we'll all do our parts to being her up to speed on who we are and what sort of jobs we do for Dr. Bunsenburger." Intense up and prepare for an unwanted round of applause, but am gladly surprised when I only receive polite salutes. "We've reached the end of our expedition with the recruitment of our newest member; hopefully, we'll be able to board the zeppelin in time and enjoy a smooth ride back to Lordaeron. Is there anything we've forgotten before we leave? Anything at all?"

"To pay for your crimes!" one of the humans hisses before being scratched by one of the ghouls again.

"If that's it, then let's move out. We scattered the rest of Nehekaia's cronies, but I'm sure they're either regrouping or seeking more help for revenge now. We need to move."

Without even needing to be told, the ghouls herd the captive guards and the priest to their feet and force them to march. Being somewhere in between the mental faculties of people and zombies, Sweetiepie and Hondakai actually require a few seconds thought before following suit. Intelligently, Barghash walks behind his shield of ghouls and prisoners of war, chatting with Ihsan about matters I can not hear. I am grateful that they are not looking, for there is one last act I must perform.

When we reach the top of a snowy hill, I stand and turn around, giving the ziggurat one last look. It is damaged from whatever conflict took place previously, huge chunks of stone missing and smashed seige machines littering the snow in front of it. There are iron grates with green stains from some kind of goo, but there is no fresh goo, thankfully. In the early afternoon sun, I can see the details of my former tomb clearly, and I do not know how to feel.

On the one hand, I hate that place. It was my curse. It was my prison. It was a place where I witnessed so much evil, unable to intervene the entire time. That was the place where I deluded myself into believing that nothing else existed and that I dreamt up the entire universe. I should run away and never look back.

On the other hand, that is where my new friends found me. Their path led them there just as mine did, at the same time, like two lines converging at the right moment. Had I not suffered so, I might not have met them; perhaps free will would have been offset and imbalanced had the horrors of that place not occurred, and I would still be there. Or still embalmed and entombed forever. Even if my existence is confusing, I am happy for it. I would not wish myself permanently dead...not now.

I only notice Purbas reaching for my arm at the last second. "As someone who once bid farewell to all she knew, let me advise you...don't linger. You'll gain nothing special, no divine inspiration, and you'll only make the goodbye more difficult."

"I..." One last time, I gaze upon the ziggurat, noticing how drab and plain it is. There is nothing special about it, nothing denoting it as significant, and according to them there was nobody else inside. It was my place of rebirth; now, it has nothing for me. "Thank you. I am ready."

I allow Purbas to pull me away and we catch up with the others. They are a good distance ahead, but we close the gap without rushing over a sizeable period of time. On we all march through the snow, trees surrounding us though growing relatively sparsely and granting a wide area empty of obstructions. Off in the distance, I can see a number of snow capped mountains. I can not see the breath of my companions in the air, however, so I assume that they must not feel too cold.

None of the others say much as we march toward this...destination of ours. Bereft of anything else to distract us, I attempt to learn about the world that exists so long after my mortal death. Even if I retain general knowledge, I am sure that much of it is outdated.

"Purbas...what is a zeppelin?"

She does not laugh at my lack of knowledge, much to my delight. "It's an aerial vehicle. Think of it like a flying boat. Do you remember boats, from your time?"

"I do not retain solid images of anything in my mind, but I remember concepts. A boat is like an upside down, inside out tree that floats on the water."

"Well, that's...an interesting and technically accurate way to describe it. So a zeppelin is like a flying air boat. There's a balloon on the top that helps it to float like Ihsan."

"What is a balloon?"

"It's usually used as a toy for kids. It's like a material stretched into an empty ball and then filled with gas that's lighter than air, so it floats."

"We will fly on the plaything of a child?!" I ask incredulously. "What if more people try to hurt us?"

"This one isn't for children though, it's durable. The hull of the zeppelin is made from steel and the balloon has three layers of leather. It isn't that big - more of a goblin transport ship."

"What is a goblin?"

"They're another race of people, small and green and talented at constructing rickety but usable machines. They're sort of like gnomes, but less refined."

"What is a gnome?"

"Sweetiepie's race when they're alive."

Ew. Well, to be fair, maybe they are less offensive to the eyes when they are alive. I shake the image out of my head and pray that Sweetiepie remains near the front of our formation.

"If the zeppelin is not that big, then how will we ride?"

Giving the question a few moments of thought, Purbas tapped one of her fingers on her mandible. Whatever experiences I had with her kind in the past, I find her pleasant and unmarred by previous negativities. She is almost cute.

"Barghash will probably have the undead among us march; they never get tired and if they encounter any Scourge on our way to the coast, they can blend in with them and simply avoid being attacked. As for the ride back across the ocean...well, we banked on finding an obsidian destroyer since Ihsan insisted that they - you - can fly. Since you also don't get tired, at least according to him, you can carry a few of us next to the zeppelin."

I listen carefully to her words, trying not to visibly balk when I realize that I am expected to perform. So far, I have discovered numerous abilities unknown to me prior to my rescue, but flying is an entire different task. Muscle memory reminds me of my four legs, my two arms, both the horizontal and vertical parts of my body, but not these wings on my horizontal back. I can fold them and flap them like a helpless dove caught between my paws, but to fly?

My silence must have sufficed as an answer, because I feel Purbas take me by the arm again as if we are two girlfriends out for a stroll. "Do you...know...? Or, I guess, remember how to fly?" she asks me skeptically. I shake my head, feeling a bit shy as I do so; their escape plan seems to have depended on me. "Don't worry," she says while patting my arm and somehow reading my thoughts. "It was all Ihsan's fault for assuming you're all automatons who awaken with the same skill set. But it would probably be best to tell the others know."

I rub my knuckles with my hand. "Oh...alright," I mumble.

Despite her arachnid biology, Purbas can move faster than me, and she drags me toward the front of the formation. A bit of nervousness creeps in as we approach the human and the shade, who are still conversing ahead of us.

"Barghash, I think our return plan might need to be revised," she tells him, interrupting their conversation. Ihsan spins around but continues floating in the same direction as all of us, which is really weird.

"For what reason?" he asks, looking halfway toward us as he continues walking.

For a second, Purbas starts to talk before stopping herself. She looks at me as if seeking permission to mitigate the pressure I feel. Although I feel disappointed to tell them the news, I would still rather stand and confess myself than leave her to do so for me.

"I do not know how to fly. In my mind, I retain general knowledge and skills. I feel as if I did not possess wings before. I will try my best, but I can not guarantee that I will be able to fly next to this zeppelin."

Barghash listens to me with a measure of sympathy in his eyes. Then he gives Ihsan an angry look before turning to me and loosening up again. "We dwell on the solution; not the problem. We're less than an hour from the clearing where we parked the zeppelin; once we arrive, I'm sure that the others can help us think of a workable arrangement. Until then, let's just focus on getting there." He gives me a little nod before turning away from us to watch the path ahead again, as does Ihsan, whom he does not speak to for a measure of time.

In silence, I follow them, occasionally chatting with Purbas as we push our way through the snow. Even if I felt embarrassed at my inability to fly, the entire group seem polite enough to each other, and I find myself feeling as if I am one of them so soon after I broke free of my tomb. I become so engrossed in the surprisingly light conversation among trained fighters and explorers that I do not notice the time pass. Only when I see a huge leather ball tied to a metal boat in between the trees do I become distracted.


	54. Companions

Zeppelins are rather impressive vessels. In my mind, I can recall vague experiences from my past life, and I know that the size is not what impresses me. Even if I can not remember exact places, my memory understands that there are buildings and vehicles much larger than this. What impresses me is the construction. The entire vessel is rickety and poorly made, consisting of wooden planks and sheet metal bolted together unevenly. The balloon at the top is a patchwork ball of multiple colors of leather, stitched together with various different types of adhesives. The deck has too little space between it and the bottom of the balloon, and the hull has a door at the bottom of the stern that will likely affect the air pressure as well as temperature. The entire contraption is shoddy, unprofessional and haphazard.

Yet it functions.

Strange gears and belts are turning, and a device which Purbas called a propeller is spinning at the front of the vessel. An engine turns inside and rumbles, though not with magical energy as I expect. Several workers of multiple races both familiar and unfamiliar tinker around with the vessel, barely taking notice of us as we approach. Even I, a newcomer who is obviously quite different, do not raise any eyebrows. Green and grey catches my eye, as well as a strange dull black unlike my jet color, though what holds my attention most strongly is not what I see.

" _Magic_ ," I blurt out loud. I recoil when I realize that the word had slipped out, but I can not control myself; my hunger is too strong for a power that burns even brighter than Barghash.

There is someone inside of the parked zeppelin's hull that is bright like the sun, but not visually. Human sized, undead for sure, but there is some sort of...power. Although I do retain my balance, I can also feel the dizziness again and I lean in to Purbas. She takes notice and seems to understand my new biology.

"That's Finneas; he's also a part of the team. I guess you'll have to get used to him, seeing as how you eat magic."

"Who...what...is he?"

"He's, well, an undead shaman," my nerubian friend replies sheepishly as if the statement is strange. "Weird, I know, but I swear there's no other way to describe him."

"I do not know what a shaman is."

"Well, they're a class that communes with the elements in order to protect both the environment and the people who tend to it. Pretty close to the opposite of necromancy, though not totally opposite but close enough. Most people don't believe me until they actually see him, and it's like, oh he really is. He doesn't actually care about spirits or elements or nature or anything, though." She paused long enough for a few small green things, sort of like gnomes with pointy noses, run in between our legs carrying tools. "He's also kind of a dick, so just be ready."

"What is a dick?"

All eight of her eyes widen like saucers. "Oh, shit, this is going to be a tough flight."

"What?"

"Nothing, nothing."

More of the creatures that I assume are goblins pull on levers and ropes, becoming exceptionally busy once Barghash pushes ahead of the group. One of the little green men sees him and wipes grease from his forehead before approaching us. "We're on schedule, sir. We're looking at a roughly ten hour flight to Camp Winterhoof at which point we'll need to stop for maintenance again. But the taunka there are friendly, so we won't be under fire when we do so." The little green man appears nervous but also skilled at hiding his nervousness. While I do not sense any hostility from Barghash, I can see in his eyes that he has paid for something and is showing a very discriminating front.

"And once we arrive at Vengeance Landing? Can we fly back across the ocean again?"

"Absolutely, sir - the real, actual zeppelin port there has a more proper tower for servicing the engine. Plus, hey, we have another job of our own back in Tirisfal - so _we_ have to get back there soon as well."

"Excellent. For now, we need to shift some weight...our new guest here will require some space." Barghash points to me, which makes me feel shy, but the goblin appears more interested in the logistics of the trip and does not stare. The little green man rubs his ungreased head for a moment of thought.

"Well...once we're at Camp Winterhoof, we'll need another day to keep the Pistons from rusting over. Then at Vengeance Landing we'll need more than a day for maintenance and safety protocol...can your minions slip in and out of potential crowds of Scourge?"

"You think as we do. They can easily blend in if they encounter Scourge, and any Alliance will be easily dispatched. Plus, they won't sleep or stop for rest the entire time; they should be at the Landing just as you're prepared to return to Lordaeron."

"In that case, mister Narume, you might want to get started assigning places; we'll be ready to go in about five minutes."

"Great. Dak, load the captives," Barghash orders, "and Sweetiepie, go bring Shelly and Bhayangkari out. You'll all be walking."

Our undead gnome cackles and says something I can not hear because I turn away when she runs inside of the zeppelin laughing. She is technically a part of the group that saved me, but I can not stand to look at her.

I am about to start asking Purbas about all these places and terms, but before I can, the lead goblin becomes apoplectic at the sight of Hondakai dragging the bound captives into the vessel.

"Aw no, what are you doing?" the goblin mechanic cries. "Narume," he says to Barghash, "you know this is a neutral ship - we can't be seen carrying prisoners of war!"

Hondakai continues loading the bound guards and priest until Barghash waves him off. "Not even if we keep them below the deck?"

"We don't have space anyway with your new ally," the goblin says while pointing at me, "and even then, we have to land eventually. What if we see an emergency flare, what if we need to make an emergency stop, what if-"

"Alright, alright, I'll send them off on the ground." The goblin and one of his assistants, a bipedal man with spotted fur, gives us a concerned look, but neither of them speaks. "Dak, change of plan. Line up the captives with the ghouls. Nehekaia stays with me." The frost revenant flickers defiantly for a second, but Barghash raises his left gauntlet. When the rings glow, the icy ghost writhes in pain and then becomes obedient and still again. "Finneas, too - he's sentient. Any potential Scourge will recognize that."

"All eyes' balls on you, captain!" Sweetiepie cackles while dashing out of the opening at the back of the hull of the zeppelin. She quickly lines up next to the ghouls, giving me a full view of the other undead horrors at our disposal.

Wearing a wide, loose dress large enough to function as a tent tarp, a grey, decayed woman that appears to be an obese human steps out, causing the frame of the hull to creak in relief as she does. Her hair looks amazing, and her face is relatively in tact, but her body is huge, even bigger than me. Behind her, she drags an iron ball at the end of a chain, and it rumbles in the ground like her footsteps as she stands among the ghouls.

"Aaiie!" I shriek when the second minion leaps out of the hull.

Landing on the grass and sleet, a strange black thing perches like an ape, her - because it appears vaguely feminine - hands and feet planted in the ground. She is thin and leathery, and her movement is fast and jerky, as if she practices all of her movements backwards. Just watching her head swivel around unnaturally is as bad as Sweetiepie smiling. Oh, and as if the strange leathery ghoul could not be any more unnerving, she has a second pair of arms. I could not make this up if I tried.

Barghash steps in front of all the undead minions save Nehekaia. Stepping especially close to Sweetiepie, he whispers something in the ear of the undead gnome that causes her great amusement. "More friends to play with!" she snickers while grabbing on to the moo moo of the big lady and climbing up to shoulder height. "Come on, Shelly! We've got work to do!"

Next to Hondakai, the obese undead human apparently named Shelly helps to herd our captives away, much to the protest of the long eared priest. From afar, I slurp up the mana residue that he has regenerated during the walk, feeling sated as Barghash follows his minions and captives away from us. Ihsan and Nehekaia float over toward Purbas and I, and the lead goblin begins to walk away. "You two might want to find your spaces," he says to me and my nerubian friend. "This is going to be a cramped journey."

Relaxed after yet another group of people treat me like I am normal, I set upon Purbas, asking her dozens of questions about all the names, places and groups that our leader has just mentioned.

"Is Tirisfal where Dr. Bunsenburger lives?" I ask, using no segue and possibly catching her off guard.

"It's a region. Lordaeron is the continent, Tirisfal is the region, Brill is where we all live. But since the doctor has us running on so many quests, we don't always spend much time there."

"So we can fly on this thing to a place called Winterhoof and then Landing?"

"No. Well, yes. Those aren't the full names, but you have the order right."

"What is the Alliance?"

"They're a faction mostly comprised of humans, dwarves, gnomes and elves. Also weird blue goat people from outer space. All people are basically good, but their government has a fight with the Horde's government."

"Are we Horde?"

"No. Well, yes. Wait, sort of. I'm not, and you're free to choose. Everybody else is Forsaken, and they're kind of a part of the Horde for now, but it's only due to convenience and circumstance - few people expect them to remain as members for long."

"Barghash is a human."

"He's Forsaken by choice; many people choose to switch sides. Most of the Forsaken are fully undead, too, so they include humans and elves and orcs who are undead, and a handful who are alive, like Barghash and Vulgha."

"Is she a human too?"

"No, she's an orc."

"Undead?"

"No, but Finneas is."

"Is he an orc?"

"No, he's a human. And undead. And a shaman."

I smile at Purbas and she flashes me a tired smile back. As patient as she is with me, I get the feeling that it is not the norm for her, and that she is trying to be sensitive to my situation. I can not explain how I know that, but like the situation with Barghash and his cruelty, I sense that Purbas is usually impatient and is suppressing her habit. Not wanting to tax her, I reach out and lay a stiff hand on her shoulder, unused to the reassuring touch after having been immobile for so long.

"Thank you, Purbas."

"Dont mention...I mean, you're welcome."

We wait pleasantly, ignoring the way that Ihsan very obviously listens in on our conversation as Barghash returns from between the trees alone. Over the wind, I could swear that I hear the faint screams of our captives, but it could also be some sheep. I do not have time to dwell on it because he walks over to the entrance of the rickety zeppelin hull and bangs on the wall with the hilt of his scimitar.

"Zulgha! Finneas! Our guest is here...our team's newest member is Rahotepa."

Lighter footsteps patter down what sound like steps as one of the two members of our group approach. Wearing a pair of gorgeous black and red robes, a green woman walks out. She is not a goblin, though; she is just a bit shorter than Barghash and has black hair that looks messy but sort of like. She might have styled it to look that way. She has a little nose that contrasts to her large lower canine teeth, and when she smiles, I feel like she is extroverted but not in the way that makes me want to turn invisible and escape.

The green woman looks me up and down. "Ihsan was right, she's not as big as the ones at Ahn'Qiraj...but that's probably better for our operations..." She meets my eyes, nearly jumping back when she realizes that I am not a machine. "Oh! Well...hello, Rahotepa. I'm Zulgha."

"Nice to meet you."

From behind her, I can already sense the power drawing even nearer. Through the metal sheets of the hull I can even roughly estimate where the steps are as the power bobs lower to our level. Despite my slight desensitization after consuming Nehekaia's blizzard spell, I am still struck by the amount of energy radiating from the newest person to step outside.

He is...well, a human. An undead human. Even though he is grey and bald, he does not appear to be decayed, and aside from his mechanical arm and jaw, he appears to be in tact, unlike the ghouls.

Eyes glowing with electricity scan me quickly. His clothes are a bit tattered but otherwise appear to be casual for a human; there is nothing to denote him as some sort of a spirit healer or holy man, not his clothing and not his unimpressed expression.

"That's it?" he asks after looking at me for a moment.

My nerubian friend glares at the undead human. "Finneas!" she hisses quietly.

Zulgha steps in front of him, as if to shoo him away. "We're happy that you're coming with us, Rahotepa! Our missions are one of the best ways to get out and see the world."

"Seriously, I thought they're supposed to be the size of a hydra?"

"Finneas, go charge up the engine so we can lift off," Barghash orders, displeased by the raspy voiced electric human's chilly reception of me.

"Fine, whatever."

Both the living and the undead human enter the zeppelin, followed by several of the green mechanics that had been hammering the outside of the vessel. Surrounded by who appear to be the friendliest of the sentient members of the group (Sweetiepie is also technically friendly but nope), I find myself easily able to get over the unfriendly reaction of Finneas. The engine rumbles, and the lead goblin sticks his head out through the opening at the back of the hull.

"It's time!" he says to us rather pleasantly.

The engine rumbles a bit louder, and Zulgha boards ahead of us. One last time, I look back to where we came from; the ziggurat is no longer visible over the tops of the trees, and I am grateful. Not seeing it makes boarding and taking part in my new life much easier.

 **A/N: if only it was that easy...**


	55. Mortars

Inside of the zeppelin proper, I understand why the goblin warned us about space. The doorway is just a bit higher than me and Purbas, and just barely wide enough. Shelly must have had a difficult time squeezing out; I have no idea what the group had intended to do about Hondakai. As worried as I am, it is better that they walked, I suppose.

Look at me, worrying about others. I never expected myself to find a group of friends to care about so quickly.

Below the deck, the livable part of the zeppelin is a bit cramped. The team of eight workers are physically smaller than us - a mixed group of goblins, a very broad shouldered creature that is apparently a mutated goblin, and a worker that Purbas calls a gnoll. Although she does not sto cackling like Sweetiepie, I quite like her, and find myself jealous of her fur coat.

Sitting in the corner while the workers do a slipshod job of securing the rear entrance, I scratch the top of my hand. My skin is hard yet movable, like a soft crystalline substance, if crystals could ever be described as soft. One of the guards managed to leave a very faint sword indentation on my shoulder during the fight, but it disappeared when I drank Nehekaia's mana. I suppose that my skin can move - sort of - but is still hard like my encasing.

That is when I feel guilty for remaining below deck. The air outside is very cold; whoever I was, Raha'otepa, I was a native of this land. Fur must have kept me warm and I know little of cold other than that hairless people are bothered by it. The gnoll could probably fare well, and I doubt that Finneas person will care, but the others must experience difficulty. Even Purbas is hairless, unlike most nerubians, which my memory tells me means that she is venemous. All the same, I could probably have an easier time if I went above the deck.

After the zeppelin lifts off, that is.

"Everybody secure themselves!" the goblin leader shouts from the top of the stairwell leading up to the deck.

A sideways tarp had been suspended from the walls, separating the workers from the passengers. Most of the crew, after what I assume had been a rough day of work on this contraption, bundle themselves up in bedrolls and lay on the floor. On the other side of the wall, our three smaller members - Barghash, Zulgha and Finneas - secure themselves to the walls with weathered, tattered leather belts. I see Purbas huddle in a corner, and she motions for me to to the same in another corner. Ihsan and Nehekaia float in front of us, undisturbed as the entire zeppelin creaks and heaves.

Metal scrapes and wood is pressed as the roar of the engine - unseen from our location - becomes oppressive. A few quakes rumble throughout the entire hull, and those crew members who are not bundled up on the floor shout to each other on the deck above us. With a few more unnerving shakes, the entire vessel feels weightless, and a tingling sensation in my core tries to pull me down to the floor. I sit in the form of a cat loaf and clutch my tools, my wings folded over my back.

After we all remain silent through a few more minutes of jerky ascension and two instances of free fall, the pulling sensation of gravity either disappears or I simply grow numb to it. I can see the tension among the others melt away and they relax, though most of them appear content to continue sitting down. Barghash notices me looking at him, and perhaps realizes that I am still confused about the world around me. Unfastening his harness, he carefully walks over and sits cross legged in front of me.

"I'm sure you have questions," he begins, removing his mask when he speaks to me. "I'll do my best to answer them. I understand that much of this is unfamiliar to you, but we'll all do our best. You're going to enjoy your new life."

Enjoy my new life...even so many hours after my escape, my sense of relief and gratitude has not subsided yet. "Thank you, mister...Narume?"

"That, or simply Barghash, are fine. I don't mind either way."

"Okay then. Barghash, you all came here to this...continent. Is there a place on this world other than Kalimdor?"

For a few seconds, he pauses. At first he looks confused, then surprised, then very controlled. "Kalimdor was a supercontinent that was broken up by a blast...the Burning Legion invaded due to the foolishness of a people called the night elves, so they sabotaged the First Well of Eternity when they proved unable to defeat the demons."

"What is the Burning Legion?"

"A faction of demons led by Sargeras, who turned on the Pantheon and tried to destroy the universe."

My eyes widen like saucers. "You are being serious?" I ask, shocked that one of the Titans could become evil. But Barghash is not a person given to joking; of this, I am sure.

"One hundred percent serious. His betrayal and the night elves' mistake split the continents; the remnants of Kalimdor are far from here, and we are on Northrend. The ocean we are about to cross used to be solid land, in your time."

"What are elves?"

"People who come in varieties, like any other race. So just as I am brown and Nehakaia was pink, and we are both humans - were, in her case - so some elves are blue or purple and others are pink, like the priest we fought, or even brown like me."

"Right. So...wow. This is a lot to take in. So the Well of Eternity is gone...but there is a second?"

"Yes, on the remnants of Kalimdor. The night elves seem to have learned their lesson after nearly destroying the world twice, and it lays mostly undisturbed now."

"And the continent we are on is called Northrend?" He nods. "So did you come here to recruit someone who is immune to magic?"

"That's part of it. Our client, Dr. Bunsenburger, seeks knowledge...some forbidden, some without benefit, occasionally some that might actually be applicable to making the world a better place. Purbas is from here and had to deliver something to her people in person, and also wanted to visit friends. Dr. Bunsenburger also needed us to deliver correspondence to Vengeance Landing, and to perform field research on the nature of the anti magic magic of obsidian destroyers. All of that was finished before we found you; recruiting a real destroyer, who could aid us in future missions, was of particular concern."

I look down at my crook and flail, feeling a bit hungry as we talk. Although I dislike pride, I do feel happy that I returned the favor of my rescue by defeating Nehekaia and her guards so easily. Maybe my current status will be of benefit after all.

"So we will live in a place called Brill, which is in a place called Tirisfal, which is on a continent called Lordaeron?"

"Correct. It's a city full of the Forsaken, the sentient undead just trying to get on with their second lives, as well as those allied with them such as Zulgha and myself. You'll never find yourself without company that accepts you, nor are there ever problems with drought or overcrowding since so few of us there eat and reproduce. And as long as you're willing to help on missions, then you'll have a place of your own to live in, just like all of us do."

Living among the undead...the prospect is a bit quirky, but easier to accept now that I have also lost my former life. But I have so many more questions about this new life. "Barghash, about the others...is Sweetiepie a ghoul?" I ask, wondering who these people are.

"No; she's a step above that mentally. I'm not sure what exactly to call her, since her situation is different from the others, but she's too intelligent to be considered a ghoul. Shelly is an abomination. Hondakai is a mummy. Bhayangkari is a geist." When he notices me tilt my head in confusion, he realizes that I never met the last person. "The one with black leather for skin. Usually geists are made from flesh wrapped in burlap, but Dr. Bunsenburger used leather for her skin. He also gave her an extra pair of arms because the line between genius and insanity is a fine one."

"What?"

"Nothing, it was a bad joke. Anyway, all of them are in the middle. Ihsan and Finneas are normal people who retain all of their mental faculties; ghouls are probably below most animals intellectually. The others are somewhere in the middle. I'm not sure where Nehekaia is, but she retains enough willpower to be a potential problem if we don't watch her."

Barghash pauses to yawn, and I turn to watch the two floating members of the group. Nehekaia holds still, but the frost magic that comprises her essence rotates and radiates around her. Both of her glowing eyes appear angry, and even though she makes no move to escape, I can sense that she has not accepted her undeath the way that the ghouls did.

Turning my attention back to Barghash, I notice the sleepiness in his eyes. The light filtering in the cracks around the uneven door at the back entrance has dwindled, and I assume that dusk approaches. Although I forced myself to hibernate multiple times, I do not feel tired; I could probably sleep if I wanted to, though I do not want to yet.

"Barghash, thank you so much - for both the answers and the acceptance. If you would prefer that we talk about the world tomorrow, then I have no objections."

Despite his hospitality, he does not hesitate once I extend the offer of delaying my lessons about life. "It's for the best, then. The crew will wake us, so don't worry about that. If you prefer to stay up, then Ihsan will be around; Finneas doesn't need sleep any more than the two of you, but he forces himself to out of habit." Sure enough, I see the rude undead human already slumped against the wall next to Zulgha, snoring just like she is.

"Good night, Barghash," I tell him as he rises and slinks back over to his harness at the wall.

"Good night, Rahotepa. And welcome to the team." He soon closes his eyes, as do Purbas and the crew members sleeping in the only room in the hull.

For a good few seconds, Ihsan just stares at me expectantly, not saying anything but not pretending to look at anything else. He seems intelligent, but without tact or real manners.

"I am going to see the view on top of the deck," I announce as I stand up and carefully creep over all the sleeping bodies.

The two red eyes of the shade flicker nervously, and he glances between me and Nehekaia. "Then perhaps it's better if all three of us go."

"Meh, only if you want to," I reply flippantly, though I can immediately tell that this was not the reaction he had hoped for.

"No, really. I insist. I think that all three of us should stick together."

He is hovering with his back to the frost revenant so she can not see his...well, I guess he sort of has a face. The shadows bubble as if he is trying to make an expression. His nervous, pleading look and the continued contempt I can sense roiling within Nehekaia send the message loud and clear: he is worried that she will break free of her necromantic servitude when Barghash sleeps.

Mustering up all the assertiveness I can, I try to use a commanding voice. "Nehekaia, we are going up to see the view," I state to her firmly. Tucking my tools into my copper barding, I raise an open palm and drain the smallest amount of her mana. Stopping myself from eating her whole is difficult, for I sense that I probably could just devour her or any elemental or purely magical being.

When I stop myself, she receives the message clearly. With one last defiant sparkle, she relents and follows us up the stairs, knowing that I am ready to eat her if she makes a wrong move.

Up on the deck, we find two sleepy eyed crew members. The lead goblin pilots a strange control panel with crude buttons, while a second goblin constantly fiddles around with the various ropes and chains holding the balloon on to the zeppelin. In a rather breathtaking scene, the stars have begun to shine faintly and both moons have risen, yet the sun is still just barely visible over the two crew members ignore all three of us; perhaps they are used to seeing a diverse range of people.

I walk over to the railing at the edge of the deck. Even in the darkening sky, I can see the ground far below, and my extremities tingle in awe. Never have I flown before; of this, I am totally sure. Nothing in my muscle memory or the faint images in my mind can come close to the scene up in the sky. Trees that are taller than the ziggurat suddenly look like twigs, and hills that could almost be considered mountains appear as little mounds of snow. We pass over rivers, ravines and a random tuskarr mining camp along our way, so high up that the whiskered, blubbery people do not even notice our presence just beneath the dark clouds.

"This is so amazing," I practically gasp, no longer even bothered by the occasional turbulence caused by the noisy engine.

Floating precariously just beyond the edge of the railing, Ihsan keeps pace with the zeppelin without visibly trying. A bit of his shadowy essence trails behind him like a tail, but he is otherwise unaffected by flying next to the vessel. "The world is a beautiful place, even if undeath can be a traumatic experience at first," he says. "Most of us eventually adapt; with good companions, many of us even learn to love our new lives."

His words give me pause. "Am I undead?" The question is burning in my mind again, having been forgotten by the events of the day.

"I don't know; I really don't know. You obviously were a normal tol'vir once, and even when it comes to them, we know so little; were they immortal? Were all of them in direct service to the Titans? And if you died so long ago, how was your body preserved so well by nerubian embalming? And what is your nature now...are you an embalmed tol'vir encased in volcanic glass, or a volcanic construct with the soul of a tol'vir transferred into it like a stone mogu?"

"Stop, stop, enough," I tell him, suddenly regretting my question. "That is too much..."

He appears confused, and I get the feeling that his analytical intelligence is vastly superior to his emotional intelligence. "As you wish," he replies. We spend a few more minutes watching the landscape change before I notice the movement.

Like little red fire ants, I can see a herd of small creatures marching. They are somewhat spread out, holding loose formations and obviously bearing some measure of intellect. When I lean over the railing, I recognize the squat figures of lochmodans.

"Ihsan...are those called dwarves?" I ask, remembering an earlier conversation with Purbas.

Red eyes flicker, and the shade drops lower than the deck itself and causes me to worry for him momentarily. After observing the movement on the ground, he soars back up onto the deck, his shadowy body sparkling nervously.

"Yes, those are dwarves, and they're members of the Alliance. I need to tell the captain."

Leaving me and Nehekaia to watch, the shade hovers over toward the lead goblin, talking to him in hushed tones that seem to be of great interest to the frost revenant next to me. I watch the dwarves in the dark below, counting two dozen of them before the first few take notice of us. We are far above the ground, to the point where they might not be able to see us easily, but somehow they spot us. The wide iron cylinders the are pushing stop rolling on their wheels, and I can tell that the dwarves have become agitated. Ihsan and the lead goblin start to argue behind me, but I am fascinated by the way the agitated dwarves scramble around beneath us. We are so high up; what do they think they can actually do?

A few of them start to operate their cylinders, like bit iron cauldrons full of fire. It is almost amusing, how they react so irately. I wonder if birds feel this way when yeti and magnataur impotently shout at them from the ground.

"I'm telling you, this is the real deal!" Ihsan urges the goblin leader as the two men line up next to me.

The goblin sounds drowsy and unconvinced. "That's the third time you claimed something was the real deal on this trip, and you've been wrong every time. Now, what..." The goblin pauses ominously, a horrified expression on his face that I can not comprehend at all.

"Do not worry; we are too high for them to do anything," I tell the little green man, thrilled that for once I am the person doing the comforting.

A loud boom rumbles below, faint but deep. The goblin starts to shake his head at me and backs away from the railing. "Lady, you don't get it! Those are mortar teams!" he stammers while absentmindedly reaching for the control panel.

Unaware, I cock my head at him sideways. "What is a mortar?" I ask innocently.

I find out when one rips straight through the zeppelin, tearing a hole in the hull, the captain and the balloon.


	56. Wings

A slight vibration reaches all four of my feet through the wooden deck of the zeppelin. It almost feels like mild turbulence. I suppose that most of the momentum was lost fighting gravity and punching a hole in the entire vessel. As well as the captain.

Blood splatters all over me so fast that I do not even gag for the first few seconds. At first I assume the red stuff to be the result of some sort of practical joke, so fast is the little captain blown into disgusting pieces. But disgusting those pieces are, and a joke the blood is not. Even though I no longer eat or digest, I can still experience nausea, and I find myself dry heaving at the same moment that air begins to rush out of the balloon above us. The thing is so large and the sharp metal cone called a mortar is so small that the air does not all escape at once. Rather, it sounds more like a slow leak, and even the basic structure of the zeppelin holds firm at first.

Shouting erupts in the hollow crew and passenger area beneath us, though I can not hear them clearly due to doubling over and retching. It is strange: my muscle memory must be strong, because I find my abdominal muscles clenching so tightly that I fall to my foreknees from the strain of trying to vomit up nothing. Even after witnessing a blood sacrifice in my honor, the splatter of the blood of a friendly person on my face is too much for me to bear and I lean against the railing.

Everything happens so fast. My head lulls and I can see the agitated dwarves operating their iron cylinders of fire, sending more of the mortars toward us. The projectiles move rather slowly, but not as slow as the zeppelin, and gravity appears too weak to stop their ascent. Ihsan pushes straight through the deck, forcing his incorporeal body to pass the wooden floor as if it is not there, and his voice is added to the shouting. A second mortar shakes the hull just when I realize that I have taken my eyes off of Nehekaia for too long.

She never did seem to accept being controlled by Barghash; she is not at the same level of sentience as myself or Ihsan or Finneas, for we are normal people like the others. However, her magic is strong, and I can feel its strength tickling me as she summons a cloud of frost around herself. Panicking, I reach toward empty space behind me without fully understanding how my powers of mana draining work. I feel an invisible net reach out from the palm of my hand and fall limp in that empty space, the frost revenant having already dodged out of the way. Sharp icicles swirl around her, and I realize that she has learned her lesson: she does not even bother attacking me. A swarm of the sharp projectiles batter the balloon, tearing even more holes in it as a mortar misses the zeppelin's hull entirely and tears straight through the leather oval above us. Surely these dwarves will kill her too if they get the chance, but she does not seem to care; vengeance has consumed her.

I stumble to my feet, quesy but determined to salvage this vessel. Perhaps these dwarves will force us to land, but then we can fight them, as long as we can land first. A third and a fourth mortar both slam into the hull just as I leap toward Nehekaia, shifting the deck underneath me. I land awkwardly and slide face first, tumbling haunches over head and almost falling down the stairwell leading below the deck. I rest on one elbow and can see that the engine is on fire and several crew members are missing. My friends are okay and trying to put out the flames, but I do not know for how long.

A rage, a pure unbridled rage wells up inside of me. This sorceress tried to take me away from my friends from the very moment they had rescued me, and now she is trying to finish the job. I roar, much louder than I thought I could, and Nehekaia loses concentration. When she turns I can see that she looks less like an amorphous mass akin to Ihsan and more like her mortal form, but made of ice and blue energy. At first she looks enraged as well, until she sees me leap for her throat.

"STOP IT!" I shout as I bite down into her magical form.

The feeling is odd. Like a shade, the frost revenant is incorporeal. I can not feel any physical flesh between my teeth, but I can sense the energy filling my mouth as I rip a chunk out of her. She screams like an unholy banshee, and then flickers as if her essence is weakened. Unfortunately for me, she is still incorporeal, and I fall to the deck again due to pouncing at a non physical entity. I flap my wings wildly, uncoordinated and unused to them, but I use the edge of one to push me upright again. Mortars are flying left and right, aimed wildly and most missing us as they leave streaks of smoke and fire in the sky. A few more connect, and the scary rumble of the engine stops, which is actually even scarier now that I think about it.

Reaching forward, I grab her from a few yards away, feeling her essence seep into me from a distance. In a desperation move, she hurls herself over the railing, earning another enraged roar from me as the coward simply avoids the fight and disappears in the chaos. Another explosion rings against the area where I know the engine is, but this time it is different.

Instead of ripping through and exiting through the top of the hull, nothing happens for a few seconds. The mortar teams below stop shooting at us, and all I can hear is the burning fire below, the shouts of my friends and the hiss of the leaking balloon. It is eerie and too quiet, and I know something is wrong...

...no...

...no no no! No, it is falling everywhere!

"Help!" I yelp as the deck is split into several pieces.

I skid back and forth as the very ground beneath my feet disappears into splinters and shards. Three masses of boxy, tube covered machinery greet me in between the pieces of deck as the engine splits apart. Clouds, snow, trees and wood all dance below me as the feeling of weightlessness terrifies me into flailing around like a spastic child. We are high...too high! Even without blood or a heartbeat, I can feel the terror inside of me as the wind whips in my face. Bodies both living, undead and just plain dead drop down, racing in a suicide dive that even my durable body could not withstand. Like Zulgha and a few of the goblins, I scream, both from fear and at the injustice of my new life of undeath being wrested from my grasp so soon.

We were higher than I had realized, above the lower level of the clouds, and more mortars explode around us as the dwarves try to obliterate any leftover debris in midair. As if I did not have enough to fear already, a large dark spot flies straight at me.

" _No_!"

"You're going to die if you don't start flying."

Peeking out from behind my wings, which I had wrapped around myself defensively, I see Ihsan. He is floating right next to me, maintaining the same speed and quite obviously safe and thus much calmer.

"Do something! Do something! By the Titans DO SOMETHING SAVE US YOU CAN FLY YOU CAN-"

"So can you."

"NO I CAN NOT FLY I DO NOT KNOW-"

"Flap your wings."

"I CAN NOT FLAP MY WINGS!"

"Pump your shoulders back and forth to get a feel for it."

"NO NO NO FIND A SOLUTION I CAN NOT FLY STOP STARING AT ME-"

"They will die too if you don't help."

Pause. Stop. Stop. Think. Pause. I am falling. The ground is approaching.

Ihsan continues to look at me calmly. "Listen well and think clearly. Purbas will be okay; she's a web spinner and will catch herself among the trees. Finneas can put himself back together again, assuming the dwarves don't get to him first. And I'll be fine. But Barghash and Zulgha will die. I'm not sure how badly you'll be hurt, but there won't even be enough left of them to reanimate."

I grimace and feel like crying again. This is...this is too much. The wind is howling. Mortars exploding. Ground coming.

"They need you to do this, Rahotepa."

Guilt. I am not stupid; I know that Ihsan is being manipulative. But he is doing it for a good reason. He knows how grateful I am, and thus knows that guilt will control me. There is no more time. I can not think.

"Alright...alright, I, I, I am trying!" I whimper while pumping my shoulders back and forth. My wings are attached to my horizontal back, not my vertical one, but the movement helps like practice. "I am still falling!"

"Your kind is heavier and denser than air. I've seen them fly at Ahn'Qiraj so magic must be involved. Remember when you transferred Nehekaia's mana back into her - use your magic. Manipulate it. You still have some left."

"I am trying!" I whine, reaching deep in the non physical way that I can not quite describe. Magic within me flows to the surface of my hardened body, and I feel my descent slow down ever so slightly. "Is it-"

"Don't talk; you're doing fine. Come on now, you have you believe that you can do it, otherwise you can't do it. Will your mana to power your flight and curve. Arc forward and control your direction."

He slips aside and reveals that Barghash and Zulgha were right behind him, below me and clinging to each other. They both try to use their robes to glide, to no avail. They probably know that it will not succeed, but there is nothing else for them to do. They will die.

Swaying but not spinning or rolling, I feel metaphoric power course through me as I find myself able to roughly control where I fall. I am still terrified, but it is terror mixed with control. Little by little, I learn to force mana into the flapping motions of my obsidian wings, magically propelling myself forward. Barghash sees me first, and then Zulgha, relief washing over the face of the orc woman. I can not see Barghash since his mask remains fastened to his head, but the way he reaches his hand out for me in futility says enough. They are so close...so very close...

So much do I strain when jutting my arm forward that I almost throw myself off course. Both of them reach for me, our fingertips almost brushing a few times as I become desperate. Both hands outstretched now, I find my living friends letting go of each other and grasping my wrists for dear life. Because flying is so new to me, I can not focus on both actions at once, and leave them to grab on to my arms, my barding, my girdle, anything they can in order to pull themselves onto my back. They sit just behind my wings, but disrupt both appendages, sending us into another spin as the ground comes to meet us. So much is going through my mind, so many thoughts about where Sweetiepie and the others have wandered, about whether Purbas will fall near any trees she can spin a web on, about how we will put Finneas back together again, about -

No. Too late.

Saving us from what would have been a very rough landing anyway is one last mortar shot horizontally at us from a ledge. The aim of the team firing it was perfect, and I watch almost in slow motion as it soars into my solar plexus. For the first time since awakening, I feel physical pain, and instead of falling down I fall straight backward as Zulgha and Barghash cling to me.


	57. Round Two

The icicles in the blizzard dance around my head, numbing my toes and ears as I clutch my cub to my breast. His tremors match my own in rhythm as I pull the blanket around him tightly, unable to shield my eyes from the stinging sleet flying around. The howl of the ice storm blots out all else, not even allowing me to hear the shout of my mate. His silhouette is ahead of me, a dark shadow against the whiteness of the storm. His mother already fell half an hour ago, succumbing to the blizzard. So many of our village already died...we had never expected a weather pattern like this. One by one, they fell to the rapidly dropping temperature, exposed after the gale force winds blew our tents away. There is a cave a few hours from us...a few hours, they said.

This time, I know the shout I heard is real. I look up to see my mate gone, no longer in clear view. Because the snow is moving so fast, I can not even see any paw prints; all of our tracks are covered within seconds. I have lost so much...I have lost everything. My heart can no longer even mourn for the fallen, not even for the candle that brightened up my life. The only adult from our village left, I try to push on, knowing that my cub depends on me to make it to the cave. Even if I can not see, even if I can not feel my legs, even if his trembling stopped and his body fell still a few minutes ago, I can not stop. Not by my own choice. Treading snow, I continue walking, even if I do not know where I am going. I fall but I continue to crawl on one hand, pushing myself even when my sense of balance disappears. I can not hold still...no...

...pain...

...pain...ouch...not bad...but pain...

"Stop moving, let me check...no, it isn't severe. Her skin is too hard. But she's definitely crack...Rahotepa, it's okay!"

Green hands reach out through the snowstorm, holding on to mine comfortingly. I was holding on to something...someone...a blanket? Fur? Tents.

What?

Dark chocolate hands take me by the other arm, pulling me into a kneeling position. A steady ache throbs on my midriff, just above my copper girdle, and my head lulls even as my consciousness quickly returns to me. The blizzard is still here, punctuated by mass lightning bolts and the occasional mortar blast. Aside from the two berobed figures fanning my face and patting my back, I see only snow.

"What...delerious...family..."

"Yes, you're delerious, but the cracks aren't severe; there is no internal damage that I can sense," says Zulgha as she fingers what feels like a sort of crusty yet sensitive cut over my stomach. "We can't heal you as easily as we did Finneas, but we can do it."

More lightning strikes, shattering glass or ice or something like that in the distance. I would describe the scene as chaos, but really it is just a blanket of snow punctuated by flashes and crashes.

Suddenly, I remember what had happened, and I hank both orc and human into a hug. "Oh! Oh no, I thought I had failed you! Please tell me this is not a dream!" I exclaim while smothering them.

Unlike Zulgha, Barghash pulls away and appears to dislike being hugged. Intensely. "You're fine," he says in a curt tone. "You took a direct hit but a single mortar isn't enough to bring down an obsidian destroyer. The surface damage can be necrotically repaired by the same means that Zulgha can summon undeath and blight; I already healed Finneas so he can hold Nehekaia off for us."

My eyes must have lit up upon hearing the news. "What...wait, I saved you? But not Finneas? Purbas? The crew?"

Zulgha stays close to me, possibly both to comfort me and avoid the brunt of the storm. "Finneas hit the ground, but he's undead; necromancers take care of that. Purbas fell into a ravine which is perfectly fine for her; there's no way she's hurt. The crew are probably dead. And you broke our fall...speaking of which, acolytes heal physical structures rather than undead flesh. So..."

Waving her arms around, Zulgha causes the snow beneath our knees to melt away. Dark, dark purple blight corrupts the rock below, sending the purple smoke of corruption wafting into the blizzard. The crack in my midriff starts to glow green, and I feel my hard skin _moving_ in an odd way.

"Your skin can't heal over time like the flesh of us living beings, nor can necromancy or simple cannibalism heal you like the flesh of the undead. The blight can return you to your original state, though, much like it does for a damaged ziggurat or other unholy structure. We need to wait this one out for a while."

More lightning strikes, causing an unseen mortar to explode across the screeching wind. Blue flashes from ice magic and silver flashes from electricity magic duel somewhere off in the distance, punctuating the chaos.

"Finneas...is fighting Nehekaia?" I ask.

"At least he's good for _something_ ," Zulgha says a bit acrimoniously. "He is only capable of casting a lightning bolt and nothing else, but Dr. Bunsenburger replaced his heart with a mana battery; he will literally never run out of mana except when the battery needs to be replaced every half century. He detonated every mortar before it got near us and fried most of the dwarves without help."

Magic flows strong all around us as Zulgha explains the situation to me. Now I realize why the energy in Finneas burned so much more strongly than even the energy within Nehekaia; his heart is a fission reactor. Hunger strikes me even as I wait for my cracks to heal, the frost revenant and the undead shaman inadvertently tickling me inside.

"What can we do?" I ask.

Barghash shakes his head and huddles closer to both of us. "Wait. Nehekaia learned that she can't hurt you with magic and tried to literally blow boulders and trees at us instead while you were unconscious; it's too dangerous to approach, and Ihsan is scouting for the others anyway. It shouldn't be much-"

With zero deescalation or transition, the blizzard suddenly stops. Only then do I realize that it had been entirely magical: I had been slowly feeding off of the mana in the air without realizing it, and when all the conjured ice and snow disappears in a split second, not only does the brightness of the stars sting my eyes but the withdrawal of having a constant mana feed around me makes me nauseous. Opening my eyes again, I see that we are surrounded by rubble, felled trees, pieces of the zeppelin and mortar launchers and lots and lots of bloody body parts. Strangely, the natural snow almost has not been disturbed from its original place, leaving the land itself relatively unblemished despite all the debris as far as my eyes can see.

Standing not too far away from us is another burning source of power. His clothes torn and bloodied but his limbs healed, Finneas stands, hands aplomb and eyes angry as he stares at a blue orb glowing in front of him. Barghash is already up before my healing is even complete and is channeling green magic into the blue orb.

"Incredible job, Finneas."

"Thanks, boss."

Slowly, Barghash raises Nehekaia again from the blue orb, her form more distorted and gassy like Ihsan. "And _you_...you've caused enough trouble for one night," he growls. I feel myself afraid of my rescuer for the first time; I do not like the way he sounds when he is angry and I wish he would stop. Clenching his gauntleted fist, he causes much of her essence to melt away until he can actually hold on to her like a loose curtain flapping in the wind. "You're staying with me...I won't tolerate you threatening anyone else."

After a few seconds, Barghash relaxes and returns to normal again. To see him so angry over Nehekaia and her betrayal is touching, even if his voice is scary. Even though he raises people from the dead, he does not seem to love death so much as he views it as another state of being. Perhaps that is how I should view my own state...

"Try to stand," Zulgha says, startling me when she snaps me out of my stupor. "A little jumpy there?" she chortles.

"What? I, no, yes a little," I reply, slowly standing again and nervously flexing my midsection to test the condition of my hardened skin.

When I do not detect any pain or residual damage, I find myself calmed down compared to the last time I remember being conscious, falling toward the ground with mortars exploding around me.

"Zulgha...where are the others? Where is Purbas?"

"Ihsan is searching for her in the ravine she fell in to - she can spin webs like the best of them, don't worry about her. He's also looking for our less sentient companions, though they'll eventually sense Barghash's presence and come looking."

Both of the menfolk approach as we speak, Finneas keeping his upper lip tight against his metal jaw and refusing to show any gratitude - had I not saved Barghash, he would not have been healed. Finneas does not seem arrogant so much as a thoughtless jerk.

On the other hand, Barghash pats me on the shoulder without hesitation despite my condition. It feels nice. "We'd have died were it not for you. We owe you our lives, and our undeath."

"I repaid your efforts in setting me free. I was glad to do it. But what now? We have no transportation, and I doubt you, Zulgha and Purbas can survive to our destination without food."

Finneas sneers unnecessarily. "Are you being serious? I'll fry the first few rabbits or deer we come across. A proper cooking fire wouldn't even be necessary - it's like fast food." As if to punctuate his already clear point, he turns and fires a glowing fork of electricity from his fingertips, blasting an innocent tree into splinters. I am not impressed by his immature showboating.

"But what about the cold? And the journey?"

For a good few seconds, we all give the matter some thought. Ever the leader, Barghash comes up with a solution first. "The ghouls can carry Zulgha and I when we need rest, and Dak will carry Purbas. The trip won't be easy, but we can do it. Just as soon as Ihsan returns-"

"I've returned."

"Eeeeeiiiii!" I shriek as a ball of darkness shoots from the horizon to right next to me in under half a second. I suppose that shades are fast since they are incorporeal, but I had no idea that he could cross such a vast distance so quickly.

Although Zulgha is startled too and Finneas does a double take, Barghash seems used to the behavior and does not flinch. "What did you see?" he asks, getting straight to the point without even greeting the shade.

"Purbas is unhurt and will join us after she...has dinner. The crew members are too damaged to raise, so she promised only to eat those," Ihsan says, causing me to make a face. I feel a bit guilty about it since Purbas has been so nice to me, and I suppose it does not count as cannibalism for her since she is not a mammal like Hondakai, but the mental image bothers me regardless. "I also found Sweetiepie and the others; they're aware of our location and will arrive here within the hour."

Within the hour? How far did Ihsan travel? I do not have time to ask, because I notice Purbas emerge from in between the trees. For a person who fell from the clouds without the benefit of me to break her fall, she looks great; unscathed due to whatever web she spun to stop her fall and...well...full and sated.

Happy to see her, I gallop over to meet her but then stop and feel embarrassed when I realize that I did not plan anything to say to her before coming. Fortunately, she saves me from any further awkwardness. "Ihsan told me that you saved our two companions here...it seems that they're in your debt," she tells me quietly while pulling me back toward the others. I am shocked by her words; it is logical that breaking their fall should equal releasing me from my tomb, but my still heart bears emotions greater than her logic.

"Do not say that," I chortle nervously, trying to brush the subject away before the others can hear us.

We all converge in a group as - I assume - we wait for our less sentient companions to meet up with us. Even though he was rudely awoken from his sleep, dropped out of the sky and hit by a magical blizzard, Barghash remains focused on our ultimate escape from this place. "There must be more Alliance forces around than a handful of odor tar teams, and I doubt they would've missed all the commotion caused by our battle at night. We can wait for the others to arrive and handle any Scourge we encounter on our own, but the Alliance won't simply be wandering around; they'll surely hunt us down."

"They already are," Ihsan interjects. "After I located the others, I kept flying for a while until I found a contingent."

"How close?" Zulgha asks, suddenly more serious and less jovial than she had been before.

"Three hours, maybe; not more than that."

"How many?"

"Three units of vindicators perhaps five men apiece, plus an equal number of high and night elven archers, plus another equal number of squires and servants. They have a few pack elekks but no ridden mounts, so they're marching rather slowly-"

Finneas interrupts the shade by punching one palm into his fist in the corniest, most cliché manner I could possible imagine. "Nothing we can't handle," the electrified zombie says.

"It's not that simple. Leading the group of about thirty soldiers and thirty servants is what I believe to be one of Nehekaia's colleagues - a holy specced priest who almost detected my presence. They also have a few injured soldiers with them...remnants from the units we scattered the first time Nehekaia attacked us, back before we found Rahotepa."

Mention of our constant tormenter ignites a minor fire of cold. Flopping around like a wet noodle, Nehekaia rebels against Barghash as he tightens his grip on her wilted form. I drain a bit of her mana until she quiets down, not wanting to give her another chance to cause trouble.

When I finish, we all look to the necromancer who leads us. I stand in between Purbas and Zulgha, finally feeling more natural rather than forced as I join the rest of the group. I do not know about all these vindications and factions and places, but I know who my friends are. And I know that we only have a few hours if we want to escape yet another assault, this time by a much larger group than what we faced before and without any resources or transportation.

"We need to start preparing now. The others will join us shortly...and we need to be ready for a hard march no later than when they arrive."


	58. March

Preparations are rushed and hurried, a sense of urgency among all of us even with the soothing attempts of Zulgha to sing in Orcish while we work and the constant brash dismissals of our antagonists by Finneas. There is no shortage of tasks: while Ihsan flies at an impossibly high speed to scout the region for other enemies, we all work at gathering and planning. The mortals among us - Barghash, Zulgha and Purbas - will need food and water, as well as rest.

We perform our duties rather well, though. Purbas catches quite a few snow hares in the webs she spins, and Finneas fries them almost to the point of charring the meat. Zulgha and Barghash travel to search for water containers among the wreckage and deceased crew of the zeppelin, finding only one that is intact but also three intact dwarf corpses which Barghash reanimates as ghouls. The scattered body parts also provide enough bones for him to mix and match into a bizarre half gnoll, half dwarven skeleton that walks at a speed most other beings consider running. I do not like it.

But I do not have to deal with any of that. Just as a precaution, Barghash asked me to remain at the central spot in the middle of the open, snowy field in between several converging woodlands. I can keep Nehekaia drained of mana enough that she can not escape or attack, though Barghash was very insistent that I do not destroy her. I must admit that I do feel a little bit sorry for her, but her constant icy glares at me remind me that the moment I give her a chance, she will turn on us again. Just as well, because I need her mana: Zulgha suggested I use the time to practice flying.

It is not an exact science, as I find out. On several occasions, I crash into the ground. There are jutting rocks beneath the snow and while I am not damaged at all (indeed, my skin breaks the ground beneath the snow into pieces), I am still given a frightening jolt every time I fall. By the time I see our less sentient companions charging toward my spot, I have almost reached the point at which I can confidently skim the ground and fall into a gallop instead of dropping straight out of the sky when I need to land.

The composition of the group confuses me; there are too many ghouls, it seems. Truth be told, I do not even remember how many of the creepy little beings there were when we last parted ways. However, there are definitely more now, and some of them are wearing medium metal armor. They are not like the death knights, who were as sentient as the living; these things lope like the little monsters they are. But I do not remember any of them wearing armor, nor do I remember there being roughly a dozen of them, nor do I remember one of them wearing robes like a priest. But Sweetiepie is leading the group as they run in the formation of a cone, and she is so horrendous that I consider pretending that I need to keep practicing my flight just so I can avoid her, so I soon lose focus on all the new additions.

Ihsan floats overhead, and as they approach within thirty yards of my spot, he flies up to meet me, as speedy as ever. "Rahotepa, congratulations on flying, but I have some serious news for the group. Some of it's good and a lot of it's bad, so the end result is kind of bad." I notice, once the minions draw nearer, that they are really pushing themselves to run fast, even Shelly and her abominable bulk.

"What is wrong? Is an attack imminent?" I ask nervously.

"That would appear to be the case; they're not resting and they know where to go due to all the spectacle of the exploding zeppelin."

"How did you escape their clutches when observing them so closely?"

"I'm a shade; I'm a master of movement. I see all, across several planes of existence, and can only be seen if I choose. Not all members of a strong team need to serve a direct combat role."

"That...is very true. But, then, what is the good part of the news?"

"It's a long shot, but I think I've discovered the mother load in terms of reanimating minions. Where're the others? I think they all need to hear this."

"Well, Purbas is with Finneas, whom you can see roasting rabbits almost beyond being edible by those trees over there. Barghash and Zulgha went searching for water."

"I can easily locate them via Barghash's rings. Could you gather the other two below? This will require everybody's help."

"Alright, I guess that I will fly over and gain their attention," I reply with a grin that Ihsan notices.

As he floats away among the trees that I saw Barghash and Zulgha disappear into, he twists half of his essence to speak to me. "Flying is amazing, isn't it?" he asks rhetorically.

"It most certainly is!"

Filled with energy both nervous and excited, I flap my wings a few times, pushing very little wind but propelling my volcanic weight via a strange, unnatural ability to fly. The minions converge below me, forming a circle around Nehekaia as I approach the spot where Finneas is constantly balancing a dead gopher in the air by blasting it upward and Purbas is rolling her eight eyes at him.

"Friends, Ihsan has good and bad news regarding our pursuers. He has requested that we all meet where our other companions are currently."

Although Purbas starts to walk over to the meeting spot in the middle of the snow draped field, Finneas appears too enthralled by his stupid game of electrocute the gopher. "I'll be right there," he says without even looking at me.

Whatever, I do not care. Propelling myself away, I practice diving into a running landing once more as I join the others, waiting for the rest of us to arrive. Familiar undead faces do not greet me so much as they exist in the same place. I pass Shelly, the female abomination even bigger than me who looks like a bloated ghoul yet has perfect hair. Hondakai towers over us, though like Shelly he seems sort of blank and distant when standing without anything to do; the fact that Sweetiepie is pacing back and forth across his shoulders and brandishing a dangerous looking knife creates a rather strong contrast. And there, in the middle of the ghouls, is the leathery black thing I barely saw once.

Bhayangkari, I think her name was. She does not really have a face so much as a mask covering the front of her head; the fact that she squats like a frog makes her look ready to pounce all the time, which is unnerving because I have no idea what she is thinking without the benefit of a face with expressions. Like a sparrow, her neck turns so fast that I do not even see the movement of her head; it is facing one direction in one instant, and a different direction in the next. She is scary, but not like Sweetiepie.

Behind us, I can hear Zulgha and Barghash speaking to each other urgently; Ihsan must have told them the news on the way here, and Zulgha is partially hidden by a large, foldable map decorated with places I do not recognize. Finneas even grows bored with gopher electrocution and joins us. Purbas, who does not know the news, looks particularly concerned.

"What's the situation, then?" she asks as the necromancer and his acolyte stand among all the waiting minions.

Ihsan floats down to recount what he saw. "A contingent of thirty soldiers and thirty servants is coming, and they're led by some of the escapees from our first skirmish and one of Nehekaia's colleagues - a holy priest. They noticed the lights and sounds from the zeppelin crash and they are actually less than two hours away from us."

Purbas appears concerned, though not as worried as I would be had I not known about the other part of the news. "Don't we need to get moving, then?" she asks, only for Finneas to wave her concerns away.

"Let's bring the fight to them-"

"That's a bad idea," Zulgha says, unsuccessfully trying to cut him off.

"We can bring the fight to them and end them once and for all-"

"We're talking about a single battalion, not the entire Alliance. There is no 'once and for all'."

"And then we can end them and raise them again, and possibly launch a full scale assault on the nearest Alliance stronghold-"

"Stop using that term like it's some sort of technical jargon or trump card, we don't even have the resources to launch a full scale assault on a trading post," Purbas says, finally losing her cool and speaking in a very direct manner.

"Plus that would technically be unprovoked - our problem is with these people chasing us, not all of the Alliance. Besides, look, that's completely unnecessary - look here." Zulgha pulls one of the reanimated dwarves over and uses its unusually large ghoulish head as a small table to lay out the map. "Ihsan found the remains of a fallen blue dragon. The skeleton is intact due to being frozen over-"

"Game over," Finneas says while raising his hands in the air as if he is a schoolboy who just defeated the other schoolboys in a game of rock skipping or some other dumb activity.

Even as irritated as I am by him, and confounded by the way everybody tolerates his behavior, I also feel general knowledge from my past life fill me with hope. "The blue dragonflight...wait, do you mean that we can reanimate this dragon to be a new friend?"

"It's not that simple. The location of the skeleton is almost an hour's march off of our current course, tucked into a narrow valley that hits a dead end against some mountains. If we decide to do this, then we'll give up a significant lead over our pursuers. And if it doesn't work, then we'll be trapped in a dead end without any option but to fight off a pincer attack."

The sentient among us pause for a moment, falling almost as silent as the minions. For my part, I lack the information of the others about our current situation. I have no idea how near or far our destination of Vengeance Landing truly is, nor am I aware of what sort of possible obstacles or pitfalls we could face along the way. I am also unsure of what we are fully capable of, since I have yet to fully understand my own capabilities, nor have I truly seen how our team as a whole would handle a conflict.

Like Finneas, Barghash seems sure of what he wants to do. Unlike Finneas, what he wants does not appear to be based on bravado or delusions of grandeur. "We'll go to raise this frost wyrm. On foot, we're still more than a day away due to the terrain, even if we mortals can sleep while being carried. With a lead of less than two hours across a trip that could take thirty six hours, we can't count on staying ahead of them forever; direct conflict is inevitable."

"Even if they catch up to us," Purbas starts, "wouldn't it be better to face them out on a plain like this, instead of cornered in a valley?"

"It would, yes," Barghash confesses. Finneas shakes his head from just beyond the little diamond we form, but nobody cares what he thinks. "But this is a cost benefit analysis. We'll fight them no matter what; the risk of fighting them with our backs against the wall doesn't negate the potential boon of raising an undead wyrm to right for us."

The nerubian is worried, but also accepting. "Alright. Alright. So when do we go?" she asks after a moment of hesitation.

"Now; we don't have any time to spare. You, Zulga and I need to rest as much as possible; we'll need to be prepared for the summoning. Dak, come carry Purbas."

Like a true minion even if he is more sentient than the ghouls, Hondakai lifts Purbas up on his shoulders. Not startled in the least, Purbas seems rather relaxed while being carried by the mummy, as if it is not strange for her. The rest of the minions line up, the ghouls forming a protective arrow shape around us in preparation of the march.

"Zulgha, show Sweetiepie the location on the map. She'll be on point."

"Point point point!" the little horror cackles while stabbing the air with her oversized knife.

"Got it."

"Observation duty?" Ihsan asks.

"Observation duty," Barghash replies. "Sweep in a wide orbit and report to Finneas if you notice anything strange. Finneas, we'll need you, Bhaya and Rahotepa in the center with Dak; Shelly can bring up the rear."

"Must hear and obey," Shelly drones in a surprisingly pleasant voice while completing the format at the back of the arrow shape. Bhayangkari says nothing, but she skulks over next to me, causing a measure of discomfort.

Barghash walks in between us. "Rahotepa, you have a very significant task if we're to reanimate this frost wyrm." He lifts up Nehekaia, so drained that she looks like a wet rag or a piece of rope, and lays her in my hand. "It's of the utmost importance that she remains undead rather than just plain dead; we'll need her for the reanimation process. Be careful."

"I will succeed," I reply, wishing I had a cool catch phrase like Shelly or Ihsan (but not Sweetiepie). Speaking of which, Zulgha quickly finishes telling the zombie gnome where to go.

"She knows the exact location," the orc says. "I think we're ready."

"Very well then. Minions!" Barghash raises his left gauntlet and the ghouls that were not already in formation - perhaps half of them - lift Barghash and Zulgha off of the ground. Like a moving carpet beneath them, or a sea of decayed flesh, the ghouls hold up the two bipedal mortals in supine positions, supporting them surprisingly well. "And try to keep it down; the living among us will need as much rest as we can get on the way there. Everybody, follow Sweetiepie's lead."

"Tee hee hee!" the creepy little gnome cackles, though this time her voice is quieter than usual per the instructions of Barghash, and we begin our hopefully fruitious detour.

Holding Nehekaia in my hand causes a constant, steady mana transfer to me, keeping my grounded in more ways than one. Finneas bleeds so much power into the air around him that I almost find focusing difficult when near him. Though his completely uncouth, disagreeable nature probably helps ground me in reality as well.

For a good long while, I march in uncomfortable silence. The minions all know what to do, and since they are not entirely intelligent, they are content to walk without any sort of interaction along the way. Out of respect for our living companions, I say nothing at first, waiting until I can hear Zulgha snoring before I consider light conversation to pass the time.

Every so often, I notice Ihsan passing high overhead as he circles, crosses and zig zags in the sky above us. As much as I want to ask him what he sees, I also want him to watch over us. The area is craggy and full of sudden dips and valleys; vaguely, just barely, I believe I can see the torches of another group traveling on foot across from us. They are most assuredly our pursuers, on the other side of an impassable valley of jagged rocks more than two miles wide. They would need to weave a serpentine path in order to catch us, and that is assuming that they could see us across a valley in the dark. Though...I guess they could just follow our tracks.

Sweetiepie is busy leading us, and I do not want to distract her. Or to talk to her, to be honest. Or to even look at her. Bhayangkari is mute like Hondakai, and also probably more like a really smart ape than a person, like the other minions. Really, my only option is a person I intensely dislike already. I do not think I would ever be friends with Finneas by choice, but the fact of the matter is that I have still been free from my tomb for less than a day. My curiosity looms large and my knowledge of the world is so little. And if I do not learn about this brave new world and my new friends, then I feel as if I will not know about myself.

"Finneas?"

"What?" he replies, already sounding impatient and tired from the first word.

What yourself. "Why are these people from the Alliance trying to attack us?" I ask, trying to glean information about the political state of the world I live in.

"Because they're assholes," he replies curtly.

"I understand that comparing them to body parts that excrete waste is a bad thing, but why specifically do they pursue us?"

"Because they're assholes who hate anybody who's different from them."

"But the crew members of the zeppelin were not members of the Alliance, and those crew members seemed reluctant to offend the Alliance."

"Because neutral cartels do business with both sides."

"But you said that the Alliance hates-"

"I know what I said!" Finneas snaps at me, and I began to worry that we might wake up our living companions. We do not, however, and he continues a little more calmly. "They'll attack anyone politically associated with the Horde. Not civilians, I mean - neither side usually does that, just extremists. But we're Forsaken, which isn't exactly Horde; our existence is against everything the Alliance believes in. Plus, very few of the undead are truly civilians. We might be in life, but in undeath, we have plenty of time and almost no material needs. There isn't much else to do other than prepare to defend ourselves."

"So most undead are considered enemy soldiers by opposing factions?"

"There, you got it. End of story."

"What about Barghash?"

Finneas scowls. "What the...what about Barghash? He was one of them and he made a conscious, personal choice to join us. They tried to stop him, he defended himself, and maybe did...some things, things that led to a warrant for his arrest being issued."

"What is a warrant?"

"What're you, ignorant? It's an official order calling for someone to be sent to jail. Look, are you going to ask me questions all night?"

"No, we only need perhaps another forty minutes or so to reach our destination."

Apparently that was the wrong thing to say because Finneas started to walk a little faster, much less patient with my questioning than the others. I feel offended, but not entirely surprised, and continue walking at a slightly slower pace. I do not feel that I know much about these pursuers other than that this is perhaps an issue of usual politics combined with vengeance over one of their own having joined the Forsaken.

Nehekaia fidgets in my hand, her long, compressed form like a two dimensional version of her former self. Ignoring the slight guilt at prolonging the suffering of the mage, I remind myself of how she tried to kill me twice and absorb a little more of her mana. The torchlights of her colleagues shine across the valley from us, gradually following the same serpentine pattern as we are; ahead of us, I can vaguely sense the sort of residual magic I would expect from a once massive source long since dormant. I do not have evidence of how I can discern the differences, but it is an instinct I feel totally confident in.

Only one day since my freedom...it is too soon to fail. I hope this plan works.


	59. Round Three

After nearly an hour of agonizing silence, I can feel the residual effects of a fallen magical being seeping into every inch of my hard skin. The power does not match that of Finneas, though the fact that his power is all concentrated in his pacemaker probably makes it seem heavier than it is; the power of this fallen member of the blue dragonflight is spread across what I sense is a very long body and the surrounding valley. As we draw near, I almost forget the monotony of the silent walk.

Look at me...so much time spent with my essence preserved in a statue, and now I grow impatient from a forty five minute march. How fickle has freedom caused me to become?

We begin to descend down a snowy bank into the valley, the ground rising up on either side of us and boxing us in. The ghouls and the mummy carry our living companions steadily, not disturbing them one bit. Even Sweetiepie miraculously manages to remain quiet as she leads us, never misstepping despite being in unfamiliar territory. Snow, rocks and pine trees rise above us, increasing my feeling of being trapped again as we descend. It is not a logical feeling: we have been traversing valleys for an hour. However, the knowledge that our pursuers are on our trail and that we are approaching a dead end worries me, even if I put my trust in the abilities of my companions to raise another, more powerful ally to aid us.

As we walk deeper into the valley, and as the oozing, faint yet very real magical energy surrounds me, Ihsan drops down out of the sky, giving me yet another jolt.

"There don't appear to be any other threats, but the people on our tails aren't even resting, and they definitely know they've found us."

"You do not have a tail."

"It's a figure of speech. They're chasing us relentlessly, and the last time I floated through their ranks, the priest got a strong feeling that he was being watched. Usually when people get that feeling it's actually true, but priests are especially perceptive."

I watch the valley even out in a low yet flat area a hundred yards out from us, and the mountainous walls of the dead end maybe twice that distance thereafter. "How soon can they reach this place?" I ask.

"Less than two hours, now. An hour and a half, maybe. We need to get to work as soon as we pass in between those two boulders."

Ihsan points to two large, round rocks that form a sort of rudimentary gateway ahead of us. They are mostly sunken into the ground and covered in what might have been Draconic runes once, but are now just light, shallow indentations eroded away by the eons. I wonder if they had been in place at the time of my own death...

...not now. We have work to do. "Ihsan, this entire place is covered by magic...it is drowning in it," I murmur as the shade floats next to me.

"Frost wyrms are the corpses of fallen blue dragons raised to live again in undeath. Although they tend to breathe ice due to the nature of their entombment, they're still creatures of arcane nature at the root of their existence. I imagine that the power coating this area will help with the ritual."

"And are we sure the wyrm will be friendly to us?"

"Yes; I've never heard of one turning on its master without foul play involved. And nobody in the Alliance tolerates necromancy, so I doubt this group has the means to do that."

We pass through the boulders, my anxiety growing slightly as I realize that we are now cornered and boxed in, but my awe steadily rising as I realize just how large this fallen blue dragon is.

"Whoa...Ihsan, that...that is not a rock jutting up over there, is it?" I surmise, pointing from what appears to be the half buried skull of what could easily be a whale to a sharp tail bone jutting out of the ground about two zeppelin lengths away. And I mean the length of the balloons, not the vessel structure which is smaller.

As if he can read my mind, he also comments on the sheer size of the animal. "Yes. More than two zeppelin lengths, I'd reckon; from what I could observe from above, the dragon appears to be sort of curled up. It probably tried to reach Dragonblight but fell here first, and Drakkari or a people similarly superstitious tried to sort of build this open air grave in its honor."

"And are you sure we can raise a creature which has been dead for so..." I stop myself, realizing the ambiguity surrounding my own second life. "How long will it take for us to reanimate it?"

"I'm really not the person to ask about that; in fact, we probably ought to wake the others now. If you'll excuse me..."

"Please, by all means."

While Ihsan floats forward past Finneas, I feel Nehekaia twitch in my hands. I drain her a little, though not too much considering the magic in this place. All around me, I can feel the residue. Normally I can even see mana when others can not, but I can not see it here; this blue dragon must have been dead for a very long time, such that the energy is more like a stain on the area. When I reach out to absorb more of it, I come up short, finding that my sort of sixth sense for magic can not firmly grasp on to anything; I feel teased by the energy in this place, but am unable to do anything about it.

The others have already risen, so I must have been dawdling while Ihsan was waking them up. I must remind myself that I have not been awake and free for very long. In time, I am sure that my tolerance for being around magic will increase, but for now I find myself enthralled and almost tickled by the stain of power in the air. Poor Zulgha and Barghash rub both of their eyes, and poor Purbas rubs all eight of hers; sleeping for such a short time might leave them with salty eyes and a headache but I suppose that, for their biology, the short nap was better than nothing. The minions remain in their arrow formation, waiting for orders.

Groggy but determined, Barghash surveys the landscape quickly. "Shelly, Dak, go hide behind those two boulders and grab anybody who walks through. If it's a hostile target, deal with them." Both of the larger minions do as they are told, walking up to the choke point in the valley formed by the crude, runic gate.

Ihsan floats up a bit higher, pointing over the edge of the raised walls of rock on either side of the valley. "There are a few crevices where the elves could possibly squeeze through, if they discover them," he says.

"How many possible points of entry do you see?" Barghash asks.

"Five; two from the west edge and three from the east."

Without skipping a beat, the necromancer seems to have a strategy. "We need one ghoul at the end of each crevice; if they notice any intruders, they need to scream, both to alert us and to scare said intruders enough to delay them."

"Yes, that's a good idea," Ihsan says. Then he stops saying anything. And so does Barghash. And I notice that Zulgha is clearing her throat.

A bit of embarrassment wells up inside, though less so had they not been indirect and polite about their insinuation. Thankfully, Finneas does not seem to understand what they mean, because I am sure he would say something mean to grab my attention if he did. "I can fly them up!" I offer, speaking a bit too fast so that nobody has a chance to add any more comments.

"Good, thanks. Here, you five," Barghash says, beckoning for five random ghouls to step toward us. All of them are unarmored, which makes them grosser than usual. "Alright Rahotepa, they aren't very heavy. Just lift them by your paws...wait, you don't have opposable thumbs on your paws, do you?"

"No, I am sordry. Just on my hands." Before my embarrassment can increase any more, I try to suggest anything. "If they stay behind my wings, then four of them can ride on my back while I carry two more in my hands. Then I can put down the ones in my hands first, and then use my hands to remove the ghouls from my front..." Stupid, stupid, I am still not fluent in this language. "...from my back and put them down with my...hands."

Purbas is standing in front of Finneas, so I do not have to see if he is making a dumb face or not. The others all act normal, which is the best possible reaction I could have hoped for.

"Excellent, that still leaves us with plenty more to work with here. Ihsan, please show her toward the important spots."

"Of course. Rahotepa, follow me," the shade says while floating upward.

Suppressing a measure of disgust, I turn away from the ghouls so they can climb on. They feel so very light, but maybe it is just the power that this form grants me that makes me strong. They are also squishy and I am sure that I got corpse blood on my barding, but there is very little that I can do about that. The two others walk in front of my and I grab their forearms daintily, grimacing as I feel meat on bones. While I see the value in raising such minions from the ranks of enemies, I feel absolutely grossed out by doing this.

Unimpeded by the added weight, I start to walk and flap my wings, flying almost straight up despite my weight. The others continue their preparations behind me, so I focus on maintaining my balance in midair. Although my skill is marginally better after practicing for almost an hour, I am still a novice, and I try my best to be careful. Ihsan leads me up higher than I feel is necessary, waiting for me to join him.

"Oh my..." I gasp as I slowly spin around, taking in all the scenery. Mountains, hills, valleys, scattered woodlands, everything covered in snow all rolls out in front of wherever I look.

"Flight is incredible, isn't it?"

"Absolutely..."

He only leaves me to my wonderment for a few moments before focusing on something. Following the serpentine route we wove, the torchlights continue to march. In the darkness of the night sky, I doubt that they can see Ihsan and myself, but watching them approach is unnerving.

"They'll be here in forty minutes at most; I wouldn't expect them to be delayed any longer than that," Ihsan says, hovering next to me. "Come on, let me show you where to put these minions."

One by one, Ihsan leads me to a few strategic spots where we descend and I place the ghouls gently. Loyal to the very end, they all creep around rocky corners, ready to pounce and scream even if faced by overwhelming odds. Their behavior is fascinating even if their visage is gross, and as Zulgha slowly blights all of the lands below while Barghash orders the rest of the ghouls to take positions, I start to wonder while I work.

"Ihsan, why are you sentient and the ghouls are not? And why are some of the others in between?"

"Barghash has read a lot more than me about my own state of being," he replies casually, "but from what he's explained, the difference isn't based on an objective measure such as magical power before death or the strength of one's soul. Most frost wyrms, for example, aren't sentient even though dragons are both intelligent and powerful in life. Some people theorize that a body is more likely to be raised sentient if the soul of the individual has unfinished business."

"You mean like a company that is incomplete?"

"No, no, not literally, I mean a soul that still has amends to make, goodbyes to say or revenge to take. Something holds them back on the world, and so they're more likely to retain their mental faculties upon reanimation. It isn't an exact correlation, but these ghouls, for example, are raised from people who either were prepared to die upon being assigned to duty in Northrend, or simply didn't have much tying them down. Or they just didn't hate us enough."

"That makes sense," I reply absentmindedly as I drop the last ghoul in its place. The world is fine and dandy until his words sink in, and my eyes widen. "Ihsan, I left Nehekaia down there!"

"Don't worry, she's probably too weak to-"

As if the cosmos was playing a joke on us, I hear an explosion of ice down below, cutting off Ihsan. I whirl around a little too quickly, spinning away before I straighten myself out and find that Finneas is frozen in a block of ice. Wise choice from the frost revenant, who appears to have returned to normal dimensions even when observing from so far up. I notice everybody scattering and hiding behind the enormous dragon bones jutting up out of the ground.

"Don't kill her! Whatever you do, she must be taken alive!" Barghash shouts, causing most of his minions - who only know physical violence - to pull back.

I reach my hand downward, finding myself unable to latch on to her essence. "I must be closer to feed off of her!" I shout to Ihsan just as the icicles start to fly.

The shade clings to my back in his strange, incorporeal manner, riding me like ghostly cavalry. "Don't dive," he whispers into my ear. "Just float down and surprise her."

As I start to cautiously descend, I notice Shelly stride forward, her abominable bulk almost shaking pebbles on the patches of ground that have not yet been blighted. Sucking in air despite being undead, she belches a cloud of green gas at Nehekaia that would probably poison a mortal. The frost revenant appears bothered but mostly unhurt, probably because she has no body to be infected, and then turns her sights on the necromancer that raised her. Shelly gives chase, but is too slow and Nehekaia floats around with impunity as she searches throughout the bone yard. Barghash jumps out from behind a wing bone and raises his left gauntlet at her, squeezing his fist and causing green fire to crackle in the blue sparks of the frosty apparition.

Like a beam of energy, Nehekaia blasts a stream of concentrated cold at the ground, freezing a trail toward Barghash as he takes cover again. Growling in frustrating at his speed, Nehekaia seems to prepare another blast before she notices how close I am. I can even see the panic in her hateful eyes as I open my mouth and start to drink a steady stream of her mana, sending her in a mad dash away from me.

In the same manner as Ihsan, Nehekaia does not exactly fly even if he insists that the both of them do; she really just floats, and the speed she possesses in the ground is lost when she is in the air. I quicky catch up to her, pulling my crook out of my barding and looping it around her neck. As if she possesses a physical body, she is yanked back by the neck, and I raise my flail in preparation to beat the rest of her mana out of her. That is when she does something unexpected.

Rather than trying to take out any of us or to taunt me again, she gathers up her mana faster than I can eat it and blasts. That concentrated beam of cold fires again, arcing into the sky and lighting up the darkness as it cuts into the clouds. My flail connects, damaging both her essence and sapping the rest of her mana and I leave her to fall, knowing that her light form will not be destroyed by the impact. What I see from my vantage point in the sky causes me to worry, though.

The torches are still following our trail, but much faster than before. I can not see the details of individual soldiers, but I see golden sigils as the priest ostensibly blesses his flock in preparation of their assault against us. I do the math in my head...Ihsan and I spent a decent amount of time flying around and dropping the ghouls near these crevices.

"We are running out of time," I say to him as I dive straight down. Once I land - a bit roughly due to my nervousness - I drain the mana away from the block of ice containing Finneas. Since he is undead, he is not in danger of hypothermia and simply pops his joints and joins the circle formed by the rest of us.

"Took you long enough," he mumbles, ignoring what I said, so I ignore him.

"The Alliance forces saw the ice beam Nehekaia fired in the sky - and they are marching toward us even faster. I saw their torches bobbing up and down in the distance."

Like a storm elemental, Nehekaia hisses at me in a bizarre, ethereal sound, but I squeeze her to the brink of her mana pool and she lays still. Unaware of the significance of the discussion, Shelly and the other minions return to the spots they had been assigned to guard, leaving just six of us forming a circle near the dead blue dragon skeleton. We all wait for a minute, pondering our situation.

Unfazed by the conflict, Barghash waves his hand as if metaphorically dismissing the threat. "This was a temporary distraction, no more than that. We still have time...we can make this work." He turns toward Nehekaia, defiant hate glowing in her eyes even after she has been defeated for the third time.

"No matter how recalcitrant you are, you'll still be thanking us for the _third_ chance at life that you're about to get."


	60. Plan

As nervous as we all remain, Barghash stays as calm as the minions the entire time. The contrast is poignant. Even Finneas appears more irritable than I have seen him prior to now.

"We can do this. The process is simple - just on a more massive scale than we've actually done previously. I'll need enough mana in order to sustain both the reanimation of a minion with a very large surface area, as well as a soul transfer."

I have no idea what he is talking about, and Purbas also does not react, but Zulgha and Ihsan both balk, and Finneas goes silent. Apparently, what Barghash is suggesting must be either very ingenious or very difficult to successfully execute. Or both.

Zulgha brushes some of her messy hair back into her hood and clears her throat, her expression one of bewilderment. "I can see two potential problems with this," she says cautiously.

Barghash nods solemnly. "I know."

"Nehekaia has refused to submit to your will so far. I've read that a soul transfer does damage a measure of the soul's personality and free will, but how sure can we be that she'll suddenly obey when shoved into a new body?"

New...body? They do not mean...no...they absolutely _do_ mean...

"A frost wyrm's breath weapon is inherently magical since they have no crop and no digestive system for fuel," Ihsan says while floating almost on top of my head. "Its offensive capabilities will be beyond any of ours, but we still have a companion that eats magic for breakfast. In the worst case scenario, we can just let Finneas blast away at it after Rahotepa absorbs all its frosty breath."

I really do not think an undead human would last long against any sort of dragon...

...wait, I see what he did there. As if an ego could be tangible, Finneas suddenly starts fist pumping as if he has received the best compliment ever. Ihsan used a totally flat, dry voice, and I have a feeling he is more likely to use Finneas as a rag doll for a frost wyrm to tear at while the minions sever its head. Never mind then, let Finneas think he will save the day. I notice that Purbas furls her mandibles in a way that I recognize as a nerubian stifling a laugh.

Zulgha, however, does not appear amused. "The other issue is the sheer amount of mana needed. This dragon has obviously been dead so long that its soul has passed on; we're talking about reanimating a flying animal the size of a kraken with a foreign soul. Plus, it's an animal that was inherently magical in life."

"That is where our mission has succeeded more than we could have possibly imagined," Barghash replies, his cold eyes brightening as if he is in the cusp of some great discovery. "I knew, without exact proof, that the shadow guided us to set Rahotepa free for a reason. She's the missing piece of the puzzle that is us...this team."

He turns to look at me. "Rahotepa...when you fought Nehekaia the first time, I saw what you did. You might not yet have complete control over your powers, but I think that you already know what I'm talking about...the way that you ended her." He gives me a serious, though not confrontational, look, and I start to remember what instinct and nothing more had led me to do.

"You want me to give you mana?" I ask, nervous in case my answer turns out to be wrong in front of the others. Fortunately, I see his stiff lips loosen into a smile.

"Yes...you see, you are the link. The pathway, so to speak; and I'm the producer of this reanimation. Finneas, here, is the power source."

Grinning at all the attention his inflated ego is receiving, Finneas seems absolutely thrilled and flashes one row of normal teeth on top and another row of metal teeth on the bottom. "You need my heart," he replied in an exaggeratedly sinister voice that just sounds pretentious.

"Your heart is a fission reactor; it will never stop producing mana, no matter how much is taken from you," Barghash says as he runs his right gauntlet, empty of his scimitar, along one of the massive ribs of the fallen dragon. "My skill is sufficient for both the soul transfer and the following reanimation, especially when aided by the blight that Zulgha summoned. The only problem is mana...your heart is an endless source, in the literal sense, but there was no means of energy donation until now."

Holding my hands out in front of me, I begin to wonder how odd we are to have all met each other. The pain of so much isolation has beaten out any belief I might have held regarding fate or even chance; free will all that I know. Yet here I am...with these people...in this situation...in the right place...at the right time. I do not question it; I am just grateful for it.

I look up before anybody else can interject in the conversation. "I am ready," I state, feeling more confidence than nervousness for perhaps the first time.

Although Zulgha still seems skeptical and worried, she forces herself to smile, and Purbas pats me on the back. I am so unused to touch that I almost lean in to her like a pet asking for more pats. "You can do it," she whispers to me while walking away, apparently having already received instructions to hide behind a lone tree that is behind the boulder gate.

"Let's make haste," Barghash says as he scoops up the crumpled, almost unrecognizable form of Nehekaia with his enchanted left gauntlet. "Bhaya, climb up on the ledges and wait to pounce on any intruders that break through the gates. Take Sweetiepie with you."

Obedient to the very end, the strange leathery geist with too many arms scoops up the psychotic little gnome and latches on to the upper levels of the valley with a strange chain hook thing that is covered in dried blood. I try not to think about it as they disappear onto the upper reaches, leaving the rest of us alone.

Pensive and wringing her hands, Zulgha looks rather unsure and I realize that she must be younger than Barghash and Purbas. "I'll need complete concentration while I'm channeling this spell; please take the remaining ghouls and Ihsan and handle anyone that comes our way," the necromancer tells her, his voice less stern than usual, perhaps in response to her unease.

"We'll do our best, but how long will you need?"

Looking down at the bones, he sighs through his nose. "I raised Shelly along with a soul transfer in a matter of seconds, and that was a few years ago. For a creature this powerful, doing the math...ten minutes. Give me ten minutes, and I can do it."

"Okay...okay," Zulgha murmurs, looking very nervous but also like she is trying very hard to control her nervousness. "I hope this works," she adds as she walks away, Ihsan and the remaining half a dozen or so ghouls - including one ghoul priest - in tow.

I watch her lead them to a position opposite Purbas in the entrance of the valley, probably ready to tackle anyone who manages to escape Shelly and Hondakai. I am not sure what Zulgha does since she does not have a weapon, but hopefully she can cast some kind of magic other than blighting the ground.

I need to be positive. I am positive. Thirty enemy soldiers squeezing through two boulders will be in a tough spot. But they also might have people attack us from the sides...and they have a priest who can somehow disable or scary away the undead...

Think positive. Think positive.

"Are you ready?"

"What? Yes!"

I break out of my stupor to find myself on one side of a diamond. To my left is Barghash and my right is Finneas; in front of me is the rib cage of the blue dragon skeleton, with Nehekaia burning like a disembodied orb inside of it. When neither of my two new friends move, I do not move.

"I'm going to start channeling the reanimation spell now," Barghash starts to explain clinically. "The faster I channel, the more quickly my mana pool depletes; the slower I channel, the slower the frost wyrm will be raised. As my mana pool starts to run low, I'll need you to tap into Finneas' reserves; they won't run out. Then drip the mana into my pool slowly so as not to cause an overload."

As he talks, I wish to ask him a hundred questions. If I drain too much from Finneas, then will I automatically inject too much into Barghash? If I fill up my mana pool, how can I prevent myself from overloading his? If I overdraw from Finneas, will I cut off my link from his mana? What if we are attacked during the spell? What if Barghash sneezes?

But I do not ask any of those questions, because then they will know that I do not know.

"Alright, I got it," I tell them dishonestly.

"Good. Let's not waste any time, then."

Crouching slightly and holding both of his hands out, Barghash starts to chant. A strange green light starts to twist out from his palms into Nehekaia, rotating like strange propellers on a zeppelin but they are like...columns, instead of wings. I am not skilled at describing odd shapes, even after having spent so much time observing the world around me.

The green strands rotate around Nehekaia, mixing with the blue energy around her in a turquoise transition. Focusing as hard as I can, I start to feel the energy around me in a more sensitive manner. While I can not see the energy, I can somehow feel it vibrating. A big ball of it resides inside of Barghash, not close to comparison with Finneas but strong nonetheless. The ball sheds some of its surface in those rotating strands, piercing the frost revenant. She pulsates like a radiant shell, power innate in her but...hollow, sort of. Instead of filling her with his own power, Barghash appears to fill in the space around her. Visually I can see the blue magic expanding like gas, but my sixth sense shows me so much more. The process feels slower than it looks, and I feel Nehekaia change without becoming more or less powerful. It is as if empty space is filled with energy but it does not mix with her. The blight is quite interesting, because it does not interact magically even though I can see it writhing around the bones as if it is alive. It does not envelope the bones; it just...dances around them.

"Pay attention! He's getting low!" Finneas says rudely, though in a low voice. Barghash is so concentrated that I doubt he can hear what his fellow (but undead) human is saying.

"I am paying attention. Excuse you." I turn my nose up at him and do not wait to see if he reacts.

Although the mana pool of Barghash does start to deplete, that happens later than Finneas predicted. I suspect that he does not have a clue what he is talking about and can not actually sense how much or how little mana is left with a given person. When I do sense the depletion, though, I become nervous. How am I to start this, especially when the person I must take mana from is entirely unpleasant?

"Alright, Finneas, I am going to start taking some of your mana now."

"About time," he replies without any hesitation. The way that he does not even consider my politeness for a second irritates me, but I bite back on that irritation since I am so afraid of slipping up.

Slowly at first, I start to draw on his mana. Immediately I feel locked in, almost overwhelmed, and fear that I will not be able to turn off the link between us. His heart is too powerful, unlike even Nehekaia, who was an order of measure more powerful than Barghash. If I let go even for a second, I feel like I will become bloated and sick, and I absorb his mana carefully. Arrogant as always, he acts as if he does not even notice, and sighs deeply despite not having any breath. When I feel as if I have taken enough, I stop.

"Rahotepa," Barghash grunts uncomfortably, "are you there?"

I notice that his spell has almost stopped, and immediately panic when I realize that I a, already starting to screw up. His mana has nearly dried up, all while I was busy siphoning energy from Finneas. Said electric miscreant snorts derisively, and I feel angry at myself more than him for giving him the opportunity.

"Sorry, sorry," I mumble while slowly feeding mana into Barghash.

I feel his mana pool swell before I have even emptied half of what I took, and I realize how taxing this process must be: the dead dragon does not feel anywhere near the power level of what I imagine an undead dragon would possess, not even nearing nine thousand. As if reacting to my negligence, I feel Barghash channeling more slowly this time, and I feel as if I am three inches tall.

To compensate, I top his mana pool off at every chance, not wanting him to lose any more time. He remains cautious, and I rush to to him off one last time before I turn to Finneas again. As if his pomp could not be any more outlandish, he actually pretends to yawn like an idiot. "Finneas," I say, "I am going to-"

"Achieve nothing if you keep on talking so much."

My jaw drops, my mouth hanging agape that he would speak to me in such a manner with absolutely no provocation on a personal level. Anger and shyness boil inside of me and I do not quite know how to react. Here we are, comrades fighting four our lives against our enemies, and he is treating me so badly. I do not bother asking why because I can see that he is a stupid jerk, but has he no sense of priorities?

Fine. I will drain his mana without even asking permission, then. And so I do. More of it flows in to me, and he continues to act as if he is bored the entire time. I take perhaps twice as much as I did before, actually nearing a satisfied state of my own before I turn back to Barghash. He is concentrating even more intently, channeling a bit faster now. I start to feed mana into him again, not allowing his reserves to drop too low.

The process is painstaking, however. When you know that an enemy army is marching toward you, a matter of minutes can feel like hours, even if you are me, a person who spent such a long time paralyzed. Bit by bit, I can feel the magic expand around the skeleton, even the parts that are beneath the ground. The area inside of the ribcage seems to be the primary area of focus for the spell, both the underground and above ground portions of the cavernous area crackling with magic regardless of whether or not a given space is submerged in dirt, ice and blight or not. The non physical nature of the magic is almost hypnotic, and I find myself almost drifting the next few times I must tap in to the heart of Finneas for more mana. Slowly, I observe as the spell is channeled into into that one space, but once the space is full the magic starts to drift outwards.

At first, the energy just wraps around the bones, even pulling on a few pieces that fell astray and were later covered by long periods of erosion. I can not sense bones or other organic material, but once the spell spreads out to those loose, buried pieces, I become aware of their presence. The process is very smooth once I find a sort of rhythm to the mana transfer, and eventually I become comfortable enough to both drain mana from Finneas and inject it via an energy beam into Barghash at the same time. I am like a conduit for magical power, and the steadier flow almost feels like a massage. It buzzed throughought my body, but especially tickles the strip on the top of my brain, moving from my forehead to the back of my neck.

Eventually I lose track of the actual progress on the reanimation of the blue dragon, as well as whatever commotion has started behind me at the boulder gates. I only notice that we have run out of time when the first arrow plinks against my hard skin.


	61. Showdown

Like a baby pulled away from her bottle or a sunbather slathered with a pile of wet snow, I groan in displeasure when my link is cut. Barghash continues to channel his spell, but Finneas turns away from me, causing the strange brain massage to end. However, his unpleasant scowl drags my focus back into reality, and I turn around to see what has his attention.

Behind the two boulders, Shelly and Hondakai hide, taking cover from a steady stream of arrows falling behind them. Purbas and Zulgha hide behind trees on either side, similarly taking cover from the volley sprinkling the parts of the ground that are uncovered. Beyond that natural gate, I can not see the archers; instead, a wall of horns, hooves and metal armor fills the space, moving in the rhythm of mortal breathing just enough for me to figure out that I am looking at people and not war machines.

"Damnit," Finneas growls lowly, gritting natural teeth against metal ones. "They've reached us already."

For a few seconds, the arrows continue to fly in a steady stream as if our assailants have an ample supply waiting. Eventually they stop, and shouting in Common echoes from behind the boulders. I can not quite make out what our enemies are saying, but they sure are mad.

Finneas turns back to me. "Keep channeling! Come on, the others can handle whatever's going on over there!" Although his words are not particularly offensive, his facial expression and the tone of his voice are, to which I take exception.

"I know what must be done," I reply as I stand sideways between the gateway and the gigantic skeleton, drawing mana from my inconsiderate interlocutor once more. Barghash does not seem to be aware of what is happening, focusing on channeling his spell the entire time.

Hooves stomp on the ground, echoing off the sides of the boulders as the sound carries through. Metal scrapes on metal and shouts in a language I do not recognize ring out. I can not see all that is happening, and I try to focus on the task at hand and trust in my companions even as our end seems to be nigh. So much necromantic magic has been channeled into the fallen blue dragon, yet it is not enough; I can feel a hollow shell there that still hungers for more energy to fill it up. We are close...yet so far. I sense an enormous mana pool opening up in the metaphysical space around the skeleton, yet that pool is still mostly empty.

For the first time, I can hear flesh against metal as well, ostensibly as the minions clash with the armored soldiers trying to advance on the choke point. Which is quite ironic, since I can now hear literal choking in the air, probably from whatever sort of status effects our side is inflicting on theirs. The din of the battle is louder, and I turn my back to it entirely so that I may focus.

Finneas breaks that focus with his raspy, irritating voice. "Hurry up! It's like you aren't even trying!" he tells me, using a tone that is less accusatory and more derisive, which upsets me even more.

"I am trying not to harm either of you!" I retort, my focus waning along with the process. Much of the mana I attempt to send to Barghash bleeds out into the air, and my speed decreases.

"What the - are you kidding me? He's casting slowly because you're channeling slowly. Put your back into it and try to actually _do your job_ , and then he'd cast faster!"

I try to reply, but the first few times I stumble over the words. In my attempt to defend myself, I start to lose my grip on his mana pool. "Stop talking like that to me, I'm trying to save us!" is the only coherent phrase I can manage.

"By wasting our time? Come on, grow a spine and actually give him some freaking mana instead of waiting for him to deplete his own and then topping his pool off!"

"No! No, that is not what I am doing! His pool only dried up one time!" My anger and embarrassment starts to rise even though nobody else is there to hear us and Barghash appears unaware.

Every bit the rotten person that I knew he is, Finneas continues to push me verbally. "I'm an expert on magic and I'm telling you that you're letting his energy get too low!"

"No you are not an expert, you can cast only one spell-"

"That beat Nehekaia when you were taking a nap in the snow."

"Stop! Stop saying that, I was hurt!"

"Because you're soft and can't do your job, and you can't even drain my mana properly!"

I scream. Beyond the point of embarrassment, I do not even bother forming words, shrieking at Finneas because I have no recourse. Ignoring everything else around us, I actually place a hand on his forehead, drawing as much of his mana as I can in as short an amount of time. He flinches, but otherwise does not react, angering me even more when he behaves as if the mana drain does not bother him. And what angers me more is that I can feel that it really is not hurting him: no matter how much I take, his heart continues to beat and pump even more than I can absorb. His stupid, ignorant certainty about his own magical nature proverbially rub my nose in his pompous nature, and I fill myself with more mana than I even thought was safe.

My head buzzes, and I even jump halfway with my front legs for no reason, jolted by the raw power. I feel like I want to dance or run in a circle to work it all off, but this is certainly muscle memory from my past life: mana is not adrenaline, and physical exercise will not work it out of my system. I forget what I was supposed to be doing, only thinking of my futile effort to prove Finneas wrong by eating away a source of sustenance that will simply never end. He is like the sun, constantly giving off energy without end, but he is also mean, so he is like a sunburn. I feel angry at myself for my inability to hurt him, and angry at him for failing to be hurt by the one power I thought would allow me to hurt all other beings. And then, I start to hate myself for even thinking for one second that I should value the ability to hurt others rather than help. Finneas is terrible: I let him bring out an awful side of my that I did not know existed, and the buzz starts to make me feel sick just like he does.

So enthralled am I by a person I do not like that I actually groan again when he pulls away and disappears. I reel, searching across the blue energy obscuring my field of vision to make out a combination of light and dark. Eventually, the starlight pushes away the haze in my eyes and I can see Finneas near one of the valley walls. How did I turn away from my previous position?

"Feed the rest of your mana into him!"

This time, is it not the harsh, unkind voice of Finneas that reaches my ears, but the more pleasant - if worried - sound of Zulgha. I shake the stars out of my head to find the berobed orc next to me, pushing against my side as if to help me stand. I look up to find dozens of little electric arcs dancing around the sky as wood chips fall to the ground. Confusion dominates my mind and I have no idea what is going on.

"Rahotepa, his mana is running low!" Zulgha tells my urgently as she leads me back...somewhere. I do not understand what is happening. "Whatever you have left, continue giving it to him!"

Him...Barghash. His mana pool. Low. Yes.

"I remember...alright." After cutting off my own sentence, I blink a few times and realize that Zulgha is bringing me back to the human in question, who has not moved an inch from the spot at which he is casting.

The speed at which he has started to channel the spell is astounding, and I panic when I realize - without even feeling his energy level - that he must be using up every last bit of mana that I give him at an extremely fast rate. Immediately I start to feed mana into him again, noticing that he twitches when the feed is reconnected. My body is still metaphorically bloated with energy, and I continue injecting him with my power even when I notice Zulgha run up next to him. I wonder why she moved there until I feel more arrows pelt my back.

Suddenly, I know: she positioned me to block herself and Barghash from the archers. The volley of arrows has started up again, raining down with little accuracy but so much volume that they decorate the ground like a field of leafless wooden stalks. Did they kill any of our allies? Are they coming for us? I have no way of knowing since I focus on sending mana into Barghash and not on anything else. More lightning bolts crack in the air, signaling that Finneas has turned his attention to other matters. That Zulgha does not scold or blame him implies that the situation is bad enough to warrant him leaving his post, and I become infected by her nervousness.

Metal dings against stone as I feel heavy thuds vibrate in the ground beneath my paws. "Keep going, everything you have!" Zulgha tells me while looking past me at whatever is taking lace behind us. More lightning bolts crackle, punctuated by the high pitched screams of a few of the ghouls guarding the crevices on the upper levels of the crags above the valley.

Having regained my common sense, I am able to at least observe the progress of my own position. I do not feel like much time has passed, but the sheer amount of mana being poured into the dead dragon is unbelievable; as much of an inconsiderate jerk as he is, Finneas did manage to spur my progress forward with his harassment. The amount of mana radiating around the skeleton seems like it could fill a house: less than Finneas himself, but certainly commensurate with what a blue dragon ought to have. Yet the minion does not stir: I sense nothing other than old bones and a blob of magic, into which Nehekaia has blended and then seemingly ceased to exist as an independent entity. The magic does not drift away or fade, nor does it coalesce into anything that feels like an entity. It is just magic floating in a place.

In my field of vision, Zulgha starts to cast magic at targets behind me. I do not see any beams of light emit from her frantic hand motions. Rather, she casts spells that occur where I can not see, leaving me clueless as to what she is actually doing. I channel, she casts, more ghouls scream, Sweetiepie cackles and I distinctly hear the sound of webs spinning. Eventually, Zulgha hides behind me, nearly cutting off the flow of mana that I have been sending to Barghash, who has not moved a muscle the entire time aside from chanting and occasionally flexing his outstretched arms.

"Rahotepa, I will try to assist him from here, but the others need you!" Zulgha says. She is much less calm and collected than him or Purbas, and I find myself worried about what I am about to see.

Having fed most of my remaining mana into him, I pull away, satisfied that I at least did my best. "What must I do?" I ask once the link is finally cut.

As if she does not quite know herself, Zulgha shakes her head. "Just help the others win and keep these people away from us!" She then promptly starts to channel a spell that looks like her blighting powers next to Barghash. Her power is less than his and indirect, and I can already tell that the process would never have made it this far without me. Whether or not they can complete it without me is no longer my most immediate concern, because I can already feel more arrows hitting me.

I turn around and try to make sense of what I am seeing. In between the two boulders, very few of the enemy armored soldiers can pass through. They appear to be the space goats that Zulgha told me about earlier, because they look like blue demons wearing matching sets of armor and carrying matching maces. A number of them are already dead, their heads caved in from Shelly swinging her ball and chain or Hondakai swinging his bare fists. Ghouls gnaw at one that is still alive but vomiting and coated in green gunk likely from Shelly exhaling on him, though two of the ghouls are also dead. Both of our larger meat shields are covered in arrows sticking in their bodies.

Purbas appears to be in the best shape: clinging to the side of one of the boulders, she constantly crawls around the sides and fires her webs from her abdomen. I know that eventually she will run out of webs due to biology but for the time being she appears to be exchanging fire with the archers, and I can hear shouts from beyond my view behind the boulders. Though I do not think that the archers will be beyond my view for long: every few seconds, the boulders shake violently and the sound of more metal hitting more stone implies that the space goats are simply trying to break the natural gate down.

This is my time; this is even more significant than previous conflicts. Spreading my wings, I fly straight into the air, gaining ground so that I may survey the scene better before diving in. To the sides of the valley, I can see a measure of further chaos: archers have slipped into the crevices as predicted, but do not have enough space to shoot properly; they are engaged in bloody, painful looking melees with the ghouls, save those unlucky enough to be set upon by Bhayangkari. The geist with an extra pair of arms swings strange chains with hooks on the end of them, pulling the intruders to the ground where she can stab them. In the valley proper, Finneas is blasting incoming arrows with numerous little sparks of electricity, like miniature lightning bolts splintering the projectiles into dust. A golden flash on the other side of the gates, however, catches my attention.

A black stain implies that Ihsan has once again been exorcised, a temporary setback that still deprives us of our observer and spy. Another priest, a pale human, stands near the stain and is surrounded by colorful archers with pointy ears. A few space goats and servants of several races hack and cough beyond the front lines, obviously sick from Shelly and the shadow magic of who I assume to be Zulgha; what she lacks in direct offensive capabilities seems to be made up for by a strange crippling curse that makes people vomit and...oh Titans, I think they have diarrhea too. It is awful, I mean, right there on the battlefield. The ghouls are less gross than...yes, it is definitely diarrhea. That is a more sure way to end a fight than even breaking their limbs or wrapping them up in webs.

The battle is not going well for us. Many of their fighters are incapacitated, but our ghouls are much less numerous and several are dead. Our only saving grace is that choke point and the fact that the minions are surprisingly well coordinated: when Shelly swings her wrecking ball, the other minions move out of her way. When Hondakai steps forward to absorb the blows of the mace swinging space goats, the ghouls wait for him to grab one of the mace and drag the space goat to the ground so they may eat it with impunity. Purbas seems to be focusing on webbing up individuals who are causing more trouble, and Finneas destroys all but a few arrows before they can reach our friends. Up on the upper ledges above the valley, I can just barely make out the form of Bhayangkari incapacitating sneaky archers with her hooks so the ghouls can eat them. I hear screams from the living follow the cackle of Sweetiepie and am grateful that I can not see what she is doing with her knife.

Nobody stops the arrows from soaring up at me, though, and I understand that there is no reason to. When the archers notice me flying just above the priest (though admittedly very far up), they panic at the sight of an airborne enemy. Arrows fly up at me, bouncing off harmlessly and falling back to the ground. The priest looks particularly outraged, and I find myself temporarily frozen and hurt when I see a person who does not know me glaring at me with such unbridled rage.

" _Turn_ , you foul beast! The power of the Light compels you!"

Foul beast? Once I regain my senses and feel the pleasant buzz from absorbing his weird sigil spell without even trying, I remember where I am. This person does not know me, but is trying to hurt me. And trying to hurt my friends. I dislike the violence I see coming even from our side, but I feel a different type of anger from the type caused by Finneas simply harassing me.

So I dive. Maybe it is a foolish action since I have only landed on solid ground and not people before, but I am stressed out, slightly afraid and also irritated. Although the archers are quite fast, their priest is slow; some of the pointy eared people jump out of the way while others try to cover the priest. With a crack, I land on three of the archers, quickly losing count of how many are left alive, uninjured and not covered in webbing once I am at eye level with them. The pink ones are smaller than me, the purple ones are larger, and the frail priest is even smaller than Finneas. Pulling my tools out of my barding, I start to swing wildly, knowing that my form and leverage do not need to be perfect since by arms are made from volcanic glass.

Whenever my flail strikes one of the elves, they are burned by green and black fire (not smoke, but black fire). They nimbly leap away once they realize what I am capable of, but not before I badly scar a few of them. A large number have ceased pelting my friends with arrows and are uselessly focusing on me, not seeming to understand that they are wasting their time even when they aim for my neck, paws and tail. A larger number of them left the priest by the arms and swiftly lead him away as he heals them, trying to get him away from me. If there are others of my kind, then they must know since they panic when I am near the priest. I swing my crook across the air in front of me, feeling it metaphysically hook on to the mana pool of the fleeing holy man, and I yank some of it back. The priest groans and buckles, pulling dead weight in his knees as the arches stumble from the sudden pull against them. From this distance, I can not sap too much of his energy, but I can swipe enough of it to bother him.

The archers go crazy as they try to stop me from catching up to the priest. They swarm me, trying to wrap their arms around my legs in an effort to halt my advance. And their effort succeeds at first, because the priest then turns around and starts to heal them every time I hit them. I continue draining his mana at a very low rate, but am constantly interrupted by all the elves. The little pink ones pull out short swords and try to challenge me, dodging away in the most infuriating way possible whenever I try to hit them back. The big purple ones are nasty creatures, clawing at my eyes and ears with their fingernails and biting my tail and wings with what appear to be fangs. It is a waste of time since even my eyes are too hard for them to hurt, but the savagery of being swarmed by a dozen elves wipes away any apprehension I possessed in regard to violence.

"Raaaaa!" I roar, startling them enough to gallop over two of them and shake those trying to hold me down into the snow and mud. The priest appears to be hobbling away in a loop, moving away from me and behind the space goats but ironically closer toward my friends...

...no, not ironically. That sigil spell...the other priest scared my undead friends with it. No, no, I see what he is doing. Crud, what a mess!

More elves form a mob train behind me, trying to grab me by the tail in order to stop me. Their actions do not hurt, but I absolutely _do not like_ people pulling on my tail, and I scratch a few of them by kicking backward with my hind paws as I pursue the priest. The action slows me down, however, and I quickly know that things are amiss when the elves stop trailing behind me.

Just as I am about to launch into the air and pounce on the priest, my view is blocked by a wall of metal. One of the space goats steps in front of me, his hooves and forehead positively demonic looking as he scowls. He is large, almost as big as Shelly, and he is not getting out of my way. When I reach into his essence, I pull out a measure of mana immediately, causing him to wince. He apparently does not rely on magic, however, since his mana pool is small and he does not swoon or waver when I drink all of it. The two of us stare each other down, tightening our respective grips on our weapons of choice. A small gust of wind blows a bit of snow in a little swirl before disappearing, and even nature seems to be clearing a path for us to crash into each other.

I pounce, both of my weapons outstretched to hit him in his unarmored face. He swings his two handed mace at the same time, putting us on a collision course-

" **OUCH**!" I cry when the mace connects with my right front flank, and it really _hurts_!

Stopped in midair, I crumple to the ground, knowing only pain. It hurts so bad. When I was hit my the mortar, I was simply knocked out; this is not a dull ache but a sharp sting. Everything is wrong, I was wrong, I was so, so cocky and foolish. We back away, me limping and relying on only three legs as I lift my right front paw from the ground. My limb trembles in pain, and I hear my skin crack like it did when I woke up from the mortar strike. It hurts...ow, this really hurts.

Smug arrogance returns to the face of the blue demon. I should have known...sharp weapons do nothing, but blunt trauma will break me. As I back up to rethink my actions, two more of the space goats join my interlocutor.


	62. Pinned

I limp backwards, completely alone in a mess I should not have created. My view of my friends is cut off, but I can hear the strangely high angelic voice of Shelly scream in fright and I am sure that the priest turned her away with his golden sigil. Hondakai is mute so he may or may not have been turned as well. The ghouls also scream, but that could mean anything since it is their only method of communication.

None of that is my concern now, though. Three big space goats are closing in on me, toying with me as they follow my limping, uneven gait backwards. They all twirl their two handed maces in their hands, sneering as they seem to realize that they could run my through right now if they chose to do so. I am so foolish. I should have figured out that the elves could not hurt me because their sharp objects could neither pierce nor slash my hard skin; not because I am invincible. The pain I feel in my right flank every second is a strong reminder of that.

So many thoughts race through my mind as they draw even nearer to me...can I steal the small portion of mana that they all seem to possess? It will avail me nothing; they do not rely on it, and even when charged up, my tools will not be enough to overcome them. Pouncing directly at them will likely result in a swift end, and if I try to fly, they are close enough to hit me on my underbelly or even my flanks as I ascend. I am afraid, I am in pain, I am embarrassed and beaten back from my assault...they are marching toward me, there is no time-

"Ash velanoh!" screeches one of the purple elves as she leaps on my back, the silver glow from her eyes shining over my shoulder. I do not need to strategize; she gave me all that I need in her irrational fury.

Reaching backward, I hook my crook around her neck and yank. She is tall enough to rest her chin on the top of my head while standing level, but she weighs almost nothing and feels like a reed paper doll as I fling her. Not knowing what to expect, the space goats react, their eyes widened in shock as they realize at the very last second that I had actually grabbed the elf from my back and flung her at them. Sweeping her in a big, circular arc, I ensure that two of the space goats smash her insides to bits with their maces before the third flinches and absorbs her battered frame in his now battered face. The momentum from my swing sends him falling backward into a few of his human servants yelling and pointing at me. The space goats appear to be top heavy, and he crushes his small attendants so badly that I doubt they can get up. Leaving him dazed and the archer and servants broken like toys, I act without thinking and leap.

The ground in this part of the valley is uneven, and slippery since the stomping hooves have mixed the snow with the dirt and created mud puddles. Screams, scrapes and magic echo behind me as the uninjured space goats appear to smash the two boulders with their maces, tired of being squeezed through a choke point where the ghouls can quite literally nip at their heels. I see none of the action as I slide down a short embankment, putting little distance but enough slippery terrain between myself and my remaining two attackers such that they do not bother swinging at me. They are only yards away, but charging would most assuredly cause them to slip and fall.

Drawing on what little residual mana I have left, I flap my wings one time and cause myself to fly straight up in magical defiance of gravity. More arrows pelt me, but they are merely a token show of anger and soon stop. One of the space goats really does dive forward and swing at me, clipping my left rear flank just barely enough to sting my skin badly without damaging it. I allow myself a single cry from the intense pain, knowing that I am not that hurt by the second blow. Seeing my chance, I drop back down onto him since he is in the mud, not giving him a chance to get back up or his ally a chance to intervene.

Desperation fuels me now; not anger. I am hurt and afraid, but I will never leave my friends. And in my frantic attempts to sway the tide again, I commit acts I never would be able to consciously, intentionally dream of otherwise. Grabbing on to the heavy man with both hands and my left front paw, I fly straight up again, draining every last drop of his small mana pool to aid in my speedy flight. Higher and higher I rise, watching as his mace tumbles to the ground and rolls into the shins of two servants, injuring the civilians greatly. From here, I can see what has happened.

While the space goats outside bash the two boulders into bits, a handful have made it inside. Shelly and Hondakai have both been turned, and are running around and flailing their arms with golden sigils fading in and out of existence above their heads. Ignoring them entirely, our armored attackers make short work of the remaining ghouls, only for Purbas to shoot her diminishing webs straight into their eyes and mouths from an impressive distance or for Zulgha to give them more bowel problems with what has to be the most horrifying curse spell I could think of. One of them starts to vomit instead, choking on the stuff as she clenches a glowing ruby in one hand and a spell book that I have literally not seen until this second in her other hand. Back and forth the priest runs, trying to dispel all the curses and feebly pull the webbing off of the archers that had been with him. Bhayangkari is spinning like a whirlwind atop the upper ledges, swinging her two chain weapons in a wide circle and slashing the intruding archers beyond the point of fighting. Sweetiepie is brandishing her knife and chasing two fully armed archers on the other side, so she must have done something unspeakably awful before I saw her in order to make the two elves run away like that.

In the center of it all is Barghash, still in the same position. From this altitude, I can feel absolutely nothing from him magically speaking. If he is still channeling, then his mana pool is very low. Most of the blue dragon bones have been covered in a combination of ice, blight and a magical shield that visually imply that the process is nearly complete. I still sense nothing from the skeleton, though; just magic hanging out in an empty, inanimate place. We need more time...but we are out of time. That is when I allow myself to think thoughts I know I will feel guilty for later.

Descending and aiming just right, I let go of the space goat, watching him fall to the ground. His comrades bashing the boulders do not see it coming, but the priest does. He casts a spell at the falling space goat that causes it to slowly levitate toward the ground, which I promptly eat right up. The demonic man falls, crushing one of his fellows and causing the others gathered there to pull back.

The split second that the priest looked away was enough for Zulgha. Squeezing the ruby in her hand until it burns into dust, she glows with unholy green light and casts a beam at the old human. Reacting just at the last second, the priest elicits an angry growl from me when he casts a beam of yellow light back, and the two energy beams push against one another in a match of tug of war. The sound of shattering stone sends me into another panic when I realize that there are enough uninjured space goats left to break it, and one of them runs straight toward Zulgha before Purbas jumps on his back. He is massive and muscular, but Purbas clings to his back and in what will haunt me as much as looking Sweetiepie in the face, she bites him.

I like Purbas. I love her not in that way. She has been so kind to me, yet seeing her unfurl her mandibles and sink her fangs into the neck of the enemy is terrifying. Because she is hairless, I understand her to be highly venemous, and within seconds the space goat falls paralyzed despite obviously being alive. Before she can even celebrate, arrows fall upon her, piercing her carapace and stabbing into the soft tissue beneath. She cries, washing away any fear I might have held from seeing her fangs as I cry too. Two of her legs as well as her thorax are hit, and she tries to run into the bushes to escape. Sucking up as much mana as I can from the priest, I dive again toward the source of the arrows without even looking, a bit of my anger returning to me.

Half a dozen elves fall beneath my weight, bones snapping and my left rear flank finally cracking like my front right flank from the impact. The second blow from a mace revisits me and pain courses throughout my body, delaying my reaction as I find my head spinning from my attack. Stepping over the archers, I find a few more of them firing at me again, aiming for my face. The arrows annoy me more than anything else, and I reaching out when I realize that like the space goats, the elves seem to innately have a bit of mana even when they are not magic users. Draining from every direction, I swing my tools, actually flinging green balls of energy at my assailants. My aim is poor and the energy balls fly very slowly, but my opponents are so close and so numerous that most of my shots connect, burning them in a metaphysical sense. Pushing through the crowd that is hitting me in vain, I fight my way on agonized, limping legs toward the inner part of the valley, unable to see anything more than a sea of long ears and sharp weapons. Desensitization starts as I learn to ignore it even when they fruitlessly stab at my eyes, since I can feel some sort of diamonds or other hard rock where my globs of white sclera must have been during life simply absorbing the blows that my eyelids do not blink away.

The sound of holy magic alerts me, and Zulgha lets out a loud, pressurized gasp. Roaring again, I push past the startled archers and run toward the source of holy magic, stepping over the unconscious body of Finneas in the process. Even though I can feel the power of his pacemaker, his eyes are not glowing and another golden sigil is floating over him, as if he has been exorcised like Ihsan rather than turned like Shelly or Hondakai. Stalking until the last second on instinct, I wait until the priest can not escape and fall upon his mana pool again. Reaching forward with my flail, I start to absorb his mana from a distance, eating up all the healing and protection spells he tries to weave over himself and his nearby allies. In between the rush of archers to push against me, I can see Zulgha laying face down in the snow. In my rage, I start to draw on the mana of all the elves around me, striking at them and burning them faster than they can be healed as I limp after the priest.

The sight of a few space goats chasing Purbas up a tree, however, distracts me. Caught in the middle, I do not know whether I should chase the priest and save Zulgha or fly toward the behooved soldiers and-

 _Whoa_ , I think Bhayangkari just made my choice for me!

"Aargh!" screams one of the space goats as a pair of hooks sinks into his cheek and ear.

Leaping from the ledges above, Bhayangkari has apparently finished dealing with the other intruders and joined the fray. Pulling with her upper pair of arms, the leathery geist brings the top heavy soldier to the ground by his own face. In her lower arms she holds two straight daggers, and although I can not see what she does to him once he falls I know that he will not survive it.

His companion turns toward her. "Die, you evil GAAAH!" he screams as Sweetiepie cuts off his sentence as well as his ACHILLES TENDON WHICH IS ABSOLUTELY DISGUSTINGLY. Titans, what the hell.

The second big blue man falls to the ground, clutching the part of his leg above his hoof as a part of it hangs...no, I do not want to finish looking at that. Or at the way Sweetiepie, who is only one eighth his size, jumps on his chest once he falls and starts doing something with her knife that I am sure is unspeakably awful.

The archers rally. "Help the draenei!" yells once of the pink elves, which I guess refers to the space goats.

No, I can not allow this. When we were attacked earlier, the forces of Nehekaia tried to take Barghash and Purbas prisoner; I do not think they will kill Zulgha, but my limited experience dictates that these people will kill the undead among us. Barreling in to more of the archers, I trample them and swing at those who dodge my charge. In a cycle of self destruction of them and not me, I drain their minuscule mana pools for a small boost to my power as I essentially beat them with their own magical energy. The priest heals very well, and I am not as fast as the elves, but the archers seem to realize that I am the only thing in between them and finishing off the others, so they all mob me and ignore the space...draenei that they were supposed to help.

In theory, I could go on like this. I am hurt, but the elves are not strong enough to hurt me any more, and I have a very big advantage over them: I do not tire. For a minute or so, we fight back and forth as they try to jump on my like a gang of youths, and the priest and I battle indirectly by hurting and then healing all of the pointy eared people. I watch them start to puff and pant and sweat, and the healing magic of the priest has diminishing returns that gradually cure less and less of the burns, bruises and even fractures I inflict upon their bodies. His mana pool starts to deplete even though I have stopped draining it directly, and I know that I can win this fight by attrition.

Or maybe not!

"Let go of me!" I yell as I feel very non elven hands grab me.

The elves back off as the priest starts to heal somebody else, and I realize that a number of the draenei had simply fled the battle when Zulgha cursed their stomachs. Now that the priest has cured them, however, they are actually as good as new, and even when I absorb their mana from the skin on skin contact, what feels like three of them are still strong enough to pull me to the ground and pin me down. I find myself on my side, both flanks throbbing in pain that causes me to grit my teeth as they practically sit on me to prevent me from moving. One of the elves snatches both of my tools away, adding rage to my pain and panic as I find myself even more helpless than when I had been encased as a statue. I try to move my head, but one of the draenei is holding my neck and pressing half of my face into the snow. When I flap my wings in vain, even a few of the elves join in, waiting for me to extend them and then jumping and landing on them, pinning me to the ground completely.

The familiar sound of the priest turning undead echoes in the air, and Sweetiepie screeches like a ghoul. I assume that Bhayangkari must be mute since I hear nothing but am sure that she has also been driven away.

Boots pass in front of my view as those servants that have not been killed run by, and I can see roes being dragged; Purbas hisses and Zulgha whines, but I have no doubt that they have been threatened into surrender. There is only one of our team left, and I can not see him, though I can see a few of the skeletal dragon ribs and notice that he is gone from his previous spot; the skeleton is no longer glowing as powerfully as it once was.

Even though we have all been captured, turned or exorcised, our enemies remain tense and almost nervous. The priest steps out in front, or at least he appears to on my sideways, half obscured vision. My anger builds up until it dulls into despair, my realization of our defeat after so many precautions taken crushing my hope.

"Barghash Narume," the priest announces in a flat, boring, exaggeratedly monotone voice. "For the crimes of heresy, arson, murder, grave robbing, destruction of government property, treason, espionage and loitering, you are hereby under arrest by the Alliance. You are to lay down your arms and submit yourself to transport to Stormwind for trial by grand jury."

There is an ominous pause in the speech, and the priest waits as the tension becomes so tangibly thick that a measure of my own misery melts away, and even the people pinning me down seem to lose focus on me as they wait. "Will you come...peacefully?" the priest asks.

Leather creaks as the archers all notch arrows in their bows. There must be one or two more draenei that survived from the original fifteen, because I can distinctly hear more metal scraping. Everybody waits, not a single person interrupting the silence as the ultimatum hangs in the air. Slowly, I hear the bones of the blue dragon rattle as the weight of someone the size of a human strides atop it. A few people gasp and others murmur nervously and I can tell that Barghash must have been hiding among the bones and is now standing atop them.

Our situation is incredible, and almost uplifting. There are at least half of the original archers still alive, and almost as many draenei, plus more servants than all of them combined. They turned or exorcised our undead, killed our minions and captured our living plus myself. They have him outnumbered, and yet they are afraid; I can sense that as clearly as I can sense the priest preparing some sort of a shield spell just in case. One man has all of these people scared...I do not know what Barghash did to make himself such a target of these people, but I know that if Finneas is a terrible person to have as a friend, then Barghash must be a terrible person to have as an enemy.

Deep in his throat, I hear him growl, and even the murmurs stop. If he gives in now, we are doomed; my heart and soul hangs on a wire as I find me and the rest of our friends prone and powerless.

"Not today!" the necromancer finally replies with such a force that one of the archers fumbles with her bow and causes her arrow to launch and embed itself in the ground merely four feet away.

Screams among our enemies ring out before anybody can do anything, and I struggle to see what the cause is. Dragging hooves and boots scraps on the rocks beneath the snow, and the crowd of enemies parts just enough for me to see Zulgha and Purbas also struggling to look up. More of the draenei, elves and the multiracial servants are getting back up after having been felled, pushing themselves forward as they attempt to rejoin the rest of the Alliance members.

But something is very wrong...and for us, it is all right. The gait of the draenei and elves is uneven, and they walk past Barghash as if he is not their enemy. When I do the math in my head, I remember that the only survivors among our enemies were already lined up behind the priest; these ones...died.

My hopes are resurrected tenfold, and even the pain in my horizontal body seems to disappear. Even when these people tried to beat us back and hold us down, they still failed to stop what I now realize is the most powerful tool in the arsenal of a necromancer. Confusion and panic rings out among the terrified soldiers as they are face to face with real, actual undead elves and draenei.


	63. Dragon

Pandemonium ensues as several of the people holding me down jump backward, and the frontline of Alliance soldiers retreats a bit. The servants, who mostly seem to just carry arrows, bandages and water, all scatter like headless chickens. Partially relieved of my burden, I can now see exactly what is going on.

Standing atop the dragon skeleton is Barghash, scimitar in hand and skull mask on his face as he defiantly stares down the priest. He must have hidden behind the dragon bones, because not only is he unscathed but he also had time and enough mana left to raise a handful of our enemies. In life, the draenei had golden eyes, the purple elves had silver eyes and the pink elves had light blue eyes. In undeath, however, they all posses the same deep blue as Finneas, and they have the same walk as Bhayangkari: their movements are jerky as if they had practiced their steps backward and are now going through the motions forward. They bear grevious wounds that start to smolder as the blight beneath their feet bubbles, and gradually their wounds start to heal.

The priest stares at Barghash in horror. "Narume, what have you done?" the older pink man asks in shock.

The younger brown man crouches to pounce, and the archers once again flinch all under the threat of only one man. "I've given them a second chance!" Barghash replies, and then jumps off the blue dragon skeleton and down the hill it is buried in.

One of the draenei throws himself in front of the priest, protecting their leader early but swinging his mace too late. In one fluid motion, Barghash kicks the draenei in the face and shatters his nose, then continues soaring and lands on the ground among a few of the servants tryng to usher the priest away. The draenei clutches its bleeding nose and falls, and the remaining soldiers scream and point like idiots instead of intervening as the undead draenei and elves fall upon him, tearing and biting.

"Stop him stop ACK!" croaks one of the servants as he and his friends are cut to pieces. Since Barghash uses a curved sword instead of a straight one, he spins in a circle and slashes several of the civilians at once, and he and the priest then both get to work casting resurrection and reanimation spells at the same time. While I know nothing of magic other than eating it - which I promptly do to the resurrection spell before it can be completed - I have a hunch that the necromancer has the advantage here. If a priest could resurrect people at any time, there would be no death, which does not seem to be the case since most of the humans, goblins, dwarves, gnolls, orcs and other people I have seen appear to be young. Since Barghash can reanimate any corpse at any time, the conflict is ultimately futile.

"Hold still!" one of the draenei shouts at me when he notices me consuming the resurrection spell in mid cast.

There are only two warriors and one archer holding me down now, and I start to fight again. Arrows pelt the new undead minions, even piercing their heads, but fail to seriously injure them. In the fracas to both lament the reanimated allies and rally the mortified troops, I wriggle out of the grasp of my captors who easily give up, and I see Purbas bite the hand of one of the human servants keeping her tied up. The others panic and run seeing as how they are not warriors, and the ones who had been restraining Zulgha flee when they see me limping toward them. Although she is young, she is also a bit heavy and seems especially hurt from having been shoved to the ground earlier.

"Come on, I have you," I tell her as I help her stand with much difficulty. She holds one hand to her hip and nods, saying nothing as if the wind had been knocked out of her and she still has not yet fully recovered.

The remaining few draenei form a wall behind us as the archers and servants lead their precious priest to safety. A line of ghouls Barghash has raised from a few of those civilian servants runs past us, providing a distraction as Zulgha, Purbas and I all limp behind Barghash, who drags an unconscious Finneas with him.

One of the draenei watches helplessly and perplexed as another one of their own, partially eaten by the others, is also reanimated with a simple snap of the fingers on the part of our necromancer. "Friends, don't!" the armored blue man pleads with his newly undead fellows, all of whom are creeping over to the line of soldiers without fear.

"Son, you don't know how far you've gone!" an old dwarven servant yells at Barghash.

Ignoring the strange insult, the human in front of us simply starts to reanimate several dead troops behind our enemies at a distance. The familiar black and green magic along with a bit of purple swirls into the sky, and I can feel the process happening even without seeing it. Panicking once more, our enemies realize that they are surrounded, and I am able to breathe a temporary sigh of relief as they find themselves occupied.

The sight is fascinating to watch, though not painful, as our enemies have beaten out of me any empathy I might have once held for them. The priest orders the soliders to all attack us, and nobody listens to him. Many of the combatants drop their weapons and beg their former comrades not to fight them, not realizing that undead minions only obey and do not truly think. Others seem to go mad, wailing and tackling the animated corpses of their former friends in an attempt to rid the world of what they must view as atrocities. The purple elves are the most bothered: at the sight of their own cursed by undeath, they lose all rational thought, attacking their fallen and raised countrywomen in groups and screeching and lamenting in their language as they do so, even drawing and quartering the undead purple elves as if trying to prevent them from ever being raised again.

The chaos allows Barghash enough time to cast some sort of spell that returns the souls of the undead, and Finneas begins to stir as if he is a living human waking up from a nap. "Damn priests and their book thumping," he mumbles as he shakes his head and tries to sit up.

Ihsan rematerializes over the black stain on the snow and floats back over to us. "Thanks for speeding that up...but please excuse me if I need a minute," he says, appearing tired or drowsy despite being undead.

"Just move out and fall back," Barghash tells them both before turning to me. "Rahotepa, are you well enough to do this?"

There is such urgency in his voice that no explanation is needed. I am in pain, stressed out, aching, tired in a non physical sense that I can not explain and battle weary from all the violence. But I also realize that I am the key to ending that...and we are so close.

"Yes...I am ready."

Over the din of our living enemies fighting undead raised from their own ranks, Barghash starts to bring a semblance of order back to our ranks. "Purbas, Zulgha, take cover at the opposite end. If you can calm down the others or at least herd them toward us, I can reverse the priest's turning ability sooner."

"We can guarantee the first part of that task," the nerubian replies as she and the orc both help each other hobble away.

Finneas stumbles into a standing position, but appears groggy and uncoordinated after whatever the priest did to him. "Let's get this over with," he grumbles.

Not even waiting for him to get his bearings, I start to absorb mana from him, taking as much as I can simply for the warm buzz that helps to take my mind off of the painful cracks in my skin. Barghash has been functioning off of almost no mana, apparently, because I find that I can feed quite a bit into him. He starts to channel a spell into the dead dragon again, this time spraying his energy coils all over its entire length instead of focusing just on its ribcage, which now contains a glowing, icy heart that looks like Nehekaia when she was defeated and reduced almost just to her essence. The blight beneath the blue dragon skeleton bubbles and boils, and the latent energy I can feel all over the bones starts to swirl around and mix like gas. It permeates the calcium and marrow, almost melding with the inanimate bones. Eventually the magical energy mixes and becomes so gaseous that I lose sight of it visually, and metaphysically I can not entirely detect its presence.

Behind me, I can hear what sounds like a losing battle on the part of our new minions, and in front of me I can see Purbas and Zulgha hiding in the bushes again as Ihsan wastes his time trying to stop our four less sentient companions from running around stupidely. Another ghoul joins them in their fleeing and arm flailing, this one an undead pink elf, and I can only assume that the priest managed to turn it in the fracas behind me.

All of a sudden, Barghash stops casting the spell. I continue sending mana to him for another second before I stop, confused as to what he is doing. "It's done, now fall back!" he says, actually reaching for my hand to help me walk. The blight has already started to slowly heal some of my cracks, but I am flattered by the gesture; he seems more like the type to order other people around and merely oversee work than to actually offer help to someone under his command, so I gladly accept his help. "Finneas, hold them back and inflict damage for as long as you can! If that priest sets his sights in you, just run!"

"I know what I'm doing!" the curmudgeonly undead human says to the living human. Just a second later, I see Finneas casting small electric arcs from each of his fingertips, shocking the most beleaguered of the draenei down the hill and allowing him to be overtaken by the few remaining ghouls.

Down the other side of the hill - more like a mound of dirt that half the dragon skeleton is buried in - Barghash leads me toward the others. "Barghash, how can the spell be done? I did not notice anything-"

The ground rumbles beneath my paws, ending my speech. A deep, earthy sound of the soil itself groaning emits from behind us, and I do not need to glance back to know what is happening. Still, being buried under rock, dirt and snow is a tough situation even for a dragon; if we truly have succeeded, and our plan did work, then there will still be some time before our newest ally can unearth itself.

We walk further away from the moving, animated skeleton and the skirmish behind it, approaching the narrower end of the valley. With a wave of his scimitar, Barghash cancels out the sigils glowing above the head of our turned allies. Once by one, Sweetiepie, Bhayangkari, Shelly and Hondakai all stop running around like headless chickens and stand at attention, while the elven ghoul runs back toward the fight. Purbas and Zulgha both pop their heads up out of the bushes, as if they half expect more arrows to soar toward them at any moment.

"We can do this, and we _will_ do this," Barghash states confidently. "Zulgha, are you okay?"

Our orc nods her head, causing her hood to fall to her shoulders. "Yes...I'm better now," she huffs.

"We need your support here. Rahotepa can heal a little faster with your magic; Purbas will need normal medical attention later, but I believe you know enough battlefield first aid to get those arrows out of her."

"I do."

"And I want all three of you," he says while pointing to Zulgha, Purbas and Ihsan, "to stay back here unless all three of you are completely ready for a fight. Otherwise, don't risk it. And Rahotepa, when you're ready, we could use air support."

"I'm ready right now," I reply, feeling residual pain in both flanks of my horizontal body but knowing that I can still fly.

Although he looks skeptical at first, he does not reject my insistence. He can not speak, however, because Finneas comes running from behind the skeleton saying many bad words. "They're on the move, and there's enough of them to smash that skeleton before it breaks out of the ground!" the extremely irate man says.

Sure enough, I can see arrows hitting the skeleton. Truly, it is an impressive creature. For some reason, I do not feel surprised by a dragon, as if I had seen them before in my past life. However, this one seems exceptionally large, and the way the bones are connected by ice magic instead of sinew or cartilage is an amazing thing to see.

It is undead...our efforts succeeded. We must act.

"Let's go!" I say, my hope once again soaring just like me as I take to the air. The minions charge below me, running around the sides of the skeleton to meet the heavy draenei troops.

I descend, watching their formations as I approach. The archers seem to have wisened up, noticing me flying down but focusing their arrows on Shelly and Hondakai. If the priest turns any of them, we will immediately lose our frontline, and I start to descend toward the back. Upon my approach, our enemies fall into disarray: they have learned that the archers are not strong enough to hurt me, but need a way to protect their precious priest, whom I easily swoop down and pick up. One of the archers grabs on to my tail but falls before I gain any significant altitude, while two of them grab on to my hind legs, causing a great amount of pain to my still partly injured hind left flank.

"Light of A'dal, save us from this monster!" the priest yells into my ear, causing me to wince as I ascend.

He tries to hit me with his staff, so I bite it and rip it away from his hands, letting it fall and shatter below in a strong foreshadowing of what I intend to do. Kicking my legs, I cause one of the archers to fall to the ground with a splat, and I see Barghash already reanimating her. The other archers try to kill her before she can rise, but Bhayangkari spins like a whirlwind, slashing so violently that she even cuts Shelly a bit.

The other archer is much bolder, leaping from my leg onto my back and trying to scratch at my face from behind, signaling one of the big purple elves. I bite her finger when it does, gagging when I realize that I severed the digit and furiously spitting the blood from my mouth. Although the elf merely hisses, the human screams, blood splattered on his white robes. Flying in a circle, I pull them even higher up and try to shake the elf from my back. Having reached a sufficient height, I throw the priest down, watching him fall until he casts a levitation spell again. I eat it from a distance, sending him into another free fall until he casts another levitation spell. We go back and forth like this a few times until the purple elf grabs one of my wings with both arms.

Because my flight is partially magical, I do not spin out so much as rapidly lose speed and altitude, floating downward instead of crashing. Distracted by the attack, I miss the final levitation spell that the priest casts, only noticing that the human has landed on the ground safely and has already started healing and reviving his allies.

"Curses!" I shout angrily, wiggling in an attempt to dislodge the archer that just will not quit.

Quick and nimble, the elf tries to put me in a headlock and yank backward on my vertical back. Happy to oblige, I dip straight backward, somersaulting in midair until we are upside down. Clinging for dear life, the elf does not let go, and so I fly straight while upside down, then make a few turns to disorient her. Although I also feel disoriented, my fear of heights and flying rapidly diminishes as I realize that my mana keeps me stabilized despite the dictates of logic, physics and gravity. Eventually, I manage to hook one of my arms beneath her knee, causing her to slip just enough such that I can grab her by the ankle, and then by her hair with my other hand, letting her dangle from my hands as I right my posture.

Now in possession of a living weapon, I survey the combat below. Two whirlwinds orbit around the circle of our enemies, who huddle in a protective mass in the center. The priest stands in the middle of it all, surrounded by layers of survivors from among the servants, archers and then warriors, all of them trying their best to hold their own. On one side of the circle is Bhayangkari, twirling around with both chains in her upper hands, the hooks at the end rapidly threatening the faces of any of the Warriors who draw too near. On the other side is Shelly, her ball and chain orbiting her bloated body in a slower rhythm that would most assuredly destroy anything in its path. The archers do not stop in their attempts to cause some damage, though Finneas blasts the incoming projectiles with forked lightning and the servants who handle the quivers seem to be running out of their ammunition. Atop the mound of packed earth that was once a hill but is now mostly rubble mixed with snow, the frost wyrm writhes, a former frost revenant beating like a heart inside of its ribcage and icy mist rising off of it as it attempts to dislodge itself from the planet. The advantage is ours, until that pesky priest meddles again.

Shooting down from the sky, a strange golden light strikes the frost wyrm, mixing with the blue light inside of its chest cavity. The former blue dragon slows down and its movements become lazy and groggy, as if the process that Barghash had enacted is being reversed. Our necromancer reacts, channeling his spell into the frost wyrm again in a battle of who can either raise or turn the partially buried undead dragon first.

"Oh no you do not!" I growl, rapidly diving back down toward the circle of our enemies.

One of the archers spots me, reactively firing an arrow that strikes her fellow. That draws the attention of one of the draenei, who is momentarily distracted and takes the ball and chain that Shelly is swinging directly to his torso. A loud clank echoes as metal breaks metal, and a portion of his body armor is somehow curved inwards and a sharp piece of it goes right through him, entering his abdomen on its own side and stabbing outward from the other as his body flies a few yards and skids in the snow. As if his nerve has been broken, the priest stops channeling his attack at the frost wyrm and actually throws his staff over the heads of his underlings. It falls harmlessly in the snow, but his words are much more powerful.

" _Turn_ , in the name of the Light!"

Letting go of her ball and chain in mid swing, Shelly sends the object flying off in the distance, throwing her flabby arms in the air and screaming like a little girl. "Eeeeeeeeee!" the gigantic abomination shrieks as she runs away, trampling the draenei that she had mortally wounded in the process.

That is all the distraction that I need. At the last second I fling the elf in my hands in a half circle, aiming right for the priest. He does not blink and casts a golden bubble around himself just at the right moment, but I absorb his protective spell in mid dive and it disappears just as the very large elf slams into him. He, four of the servants and two more archers all fall to the ground as if hit by a shockwave. Opening my wings wide, I slow my fall and avoid injuring my lower body any further as I land on them, grabbing a paw ful of priestly robes as I start to fly. Immediately I am tackled by all of the archers and even a few servants, and instead of flying up I instead glide away from the frost wyrm so that it might have a few more minutes to recover and then unearth itself.

The last two draenei try to chase me, raising their maces to strike even if they hurt their comrades in the process. A shadow creeps up behind them and two hands with only three fingers wrap around their necks, lifting them until their hooves dangle off of the ground. Hondakai pulls them apart and then together, smashing their craniums against one another so hard that they both twitch like squished bugs when he drops them. Bhayangkari jumps on them and starts cutting just to ensure that they do not get back up, and one by one more of the archers fall off of me as Sweetiepie runs beneath their respective fields of vision and does things I would rather not imagine. Free of my encumbrance, I fly back in a loop, dragging the priest with me.

Lightning strikes below, and I catch a glimpse of the surviving members of the Alliance fleeing as Finneas roasts a few of them. Rumbling and cracking, the ground finally breaks open, and the frost wyrm stands on its legs for the first time. It appears to be strong yet uncoordinated, just like I was when those two death knights first broke me out of my encasing, and I know what I must do. It is not fair that we raised the frost wyrm to help us in this battle yet it was robbed of any participation.

"Curse you, nefarious monster!" the priest screeches at me as I lock eyes with the frost wyrm. I can tell that the creature is not sentient, but a certain sort of instinct kicks in as it eyes my prize.

"Oh shut it."

With that, I unceremoniously drop him into the open maw of the former blue dragon. Its jaws chomp down on him, chewing him to pieces that freeze and then crack into little ice shavings that magically burn when they go down its imaginary gullet into the mass of blue energy between its ribs. Unsatisfied with one single morsel, the frost wyrm roars so loud that we all wince, slamming its bony tail on the ground.

Flapping its wings and rising magically like I do, the frost wyrm soars into the air, nearly clipping Finneas with its tail as it does so. From my vantage point, I have a perfect view as our newest ally chases down the survivors fleeing the valley, freezing them in blocks of ice with a minor blizzard that it sprays out of its mouth. The sight is incredible, and I do not even notice when Ihsan floats up next to me.

"It's really something, isn't it?"

"Gah! Stop! What? Yes, it is interesting." I look down to see Shelly calmed down and collecting her wrecking ball, and a new batch of human, dwarven, elven and draenei ghouls rising from the blight. Since the frost wyrm is taking its time picking off all of the escapees, I find no reason not to relax a bit. "So...this is it? We won?"

Visibly nodding his shadowy head, Ihsan starts to drop back down toward the ground. "Usually I like to be a bit reserved about this, but in this case...I think we can not breathe a little bit easier." Because he has no face, I can not tell if he is trying to make a joke or simply misspeaking, but I follow him downward all the same.

More ghouls have risen from the ranks of our former enemies, standing still as a strongly contrasting backdrop to the rampaging frost wyrm spewing ice over the other side of the valley. In a display that I must avert my eyes from, Hondakai and little Sweetiepie feast on severed body parts left by our enemies, the wounds in the dull green hide of the big forest troll healing before my eyes as he and the psychotic gnome cannibalize the fallen. Even Shelly joins in, though she at least has the common courtesy to pull a fork it of her blouse and cannibalize the fallen with class. I can not explain how I know what classiness or forks are.

Only Bhayangkari holds still from the quasi sentient among us, standing next to Finneas, who punches the air as if he solved all of our problems himself. Purbas sits across from him, folding her legs beneath her in another cat like loaf as Zulgha bandages the arrow wounds in her carapace. Barghash is in the middle, waiting for Ihsan and I to land next to him.

Harrumphing like an old man, Finneas switches from his post battle celebration to a surliness that comes off as very fake. "All that work to reanimate a dragon and it didn't rise until we'd done all the dirty work," he huffed, never able to say anything remotely positive.

Barghash removes his mask and rubs his thumb over one of the rings melded onto is left gauntlet. It glows, and I notice the icy heart of the frost wyrm glow a bit more brightly in the distance. "This time. But Nehekaia will prove her worth...soon."

The rest of us balk, save Ihsan who does not have enough detail to his features or nuance in his body language to do so. "Nehekaia?" the shade asks curiously. "Are you sure that's an apt name choice?"

"It isn't a choice; that's who she is. The soul of that blue dragon is long gone, hence the soul transfer. Of course, our former pursuer has lost a measure of her intellect, but the power latent in that draconic shell is more than enough to compensate. But make no mistake: that wyrm _is_ Nehekaia, and she _is_ under our control." Nobody answers, weary after having received so many problems from the frost mage but apparently deferring to the judgment of our necromancer, as do I. "Now then...we'll probably need some time to rest up. Objectively speaking, this was still just a very painful, harrowing setback. We've reanimated who is our new transport to Vengeance Landing as well as a brand new minion to present to the good doctor upon our return. I do believe some sleep is in order."

I can feel the blight further healing my cracks as I stand upon it, but my mortal companions are not as durable. "I know this isn't an ideal spot," Purbas says wearily, "but I'm still in a bit of pain. Even if we can ride the dragon, I'm as sleep deprived as the rest of us, and sore."

Although Zulgha appears to have recovered from the previous assault by our foes, her eyes are red and tired. "Me too...but it's so cold out here. We'll need Finneas' heart again for warmth."

"Wouldn't be the first time I've kept everybody alive," the undead human brags, and I want to slap him. "Plus, a bit of shuteye would do my mind some good, even if my body doesn't need it."

"We'll keep Nehekaia and the minions on watch, then," Barghash says, causing me to wince again. I do not think I will easily get used to hearing that name in a positive light. "The rest of us can huddle in the bushes, and the heat from Finneas' pacemaker should be enough to help us sleep. Rahotepa, Ihsan, it's up to the two of you if you want to force yourselves to sleep alongside us."

"I'll stay awake," Ihsan says. "I much prefer the observations of the real world to whatever dreams my mind might imagine during an unnecessary and unnatural slumber." He then looks at me to see if I will stay up with him or not.

"I think that I will stay awake at least for a period of time. I am still distressed...I have been free for less than twenty four hours."

For a few seconds, the determination and calculating logic in the eyes of Barghash are pushed aside. "You're a true friend, and you've had a very difficult reentry into the world. Either choice you make mandates respect." Although he does not appear shy to speak so kindly in front of the others, he does not linger, as if he is not willing to show feelings for too long at any given time.

"Bhaya, please ensure that you and the others secure the perimeter while we sleep. Unless there's any sort of danger, don't wake us; leave us to sleep as long as we can."

In the same jerky, disturbingly rapid manner as she always moves, the black leathery geist nods her head before leaping away toward the frontal, narrower part of the valley. The ghouls start dragging their partially decomposed bodies around the rims of the valley, engaging in a monotonous vigil without even being specifically told. The sentient among us find a series of hedges beneath a tree that provides a shield to any potential wind that blows by our position.

Purbas sits down first, forming a loaf again as she leans against the tree. Zulgha sits against her and they sort of support each other, and Barghash sits next to them. Like myself, Finneas can not feel the cold from what I understand, but he huddled next to them regardless. His artificial heartbeat is just barely visible through his chest due to its power, and I assume that the power he naturally exudes must be what causes the few flecks of snow beneath the bushes to melt. They all look rather cute, bunched together like a litter of kittens, and I realize how strongly the sleep must have been affecting them since Purbas falls asleep almost immediately. Ironically, Finneas is next, somewhat stiff but obviously unconscious as he forces himself into a state similar to sleep that his body does not actually need. Fighting off drooping eyelids, Zulgha tries to talk to me before she gives in to the slumber.

"Don't be shy...if you want to...join us," she yawns before her eyelids shut for the last time. During her truncated sentence Barghash apparently slept as well, leaving Ihsan and I watching over them for a few moments.

High overhead, almost at the height that the zeppelin had flown at, Nehekaia soars, flying in a circle around our location even though she could not possibly have heard Barghash speaking. Perhaps his gauntlet holds a communicative power, or simply his necromancy, but all of the minions appear to know what to do. Without fail, the ghouls pace up and down the valley, coordinating their positions and routes surprisingly well for non sentient beings. An elf that I used as a living weapon against the priest walks past me without glaring or even glancing in my direction, all willpower gone in her servitude. One of the draenei that I suspect had hit me walks back and forth in front of the smashed boulders, a large dent in its skull greeting me whenever I look at it. Bhayangkari and Sweetiepie climbed up to the upper ledges above us again, and repeatedly inspect all the crevices for any further intrusions. By all measures, my presence really is not needed for this task; we actually seemed to have neutralized the threat against us.

My mind blank, I walk away from the bushes and stare up at the twilight, wondering how long Ihsan and I must wait until dawn breaks over the horizon. It is a peaceful time, and I do not hear any sound other than the crunch of leaves beneath boots every so often. The colors of the sky are beautiful, I notice, and even Ihsan pauses next to me to watch instead of surveying our temporary resting place.

I do not know how long we stand before he speaks, but I am sure that it was a considerable amount of time.

"Congratulations on your first day in the team," he says dryly, and I laugh even more when he pretends that he was not joking.

"Is every day like this?"

"No, not quite. Much of our time is spent waiting on call, tending to minions...Doctor Bunsenburger supplies the authorities in our city with canon fodder and manual laborers in return for them looking the other way in regard to his lack of medical ethics."

I do not wish to think ill of the client of our team if it was his order that lead to me freedom, and so I do not press the issue. "Well, I look forward to days that aren't quite as eventful as this one," I reply as we stargaze. This is probably the first instance in which I have simply been at rest since my rescue, and I almost feel unprepared for the silence and lack of stimulus. Sharing my watch with a person who only speaks intermittently adds to the sense of mental exhaustion, like a runner after the race has finished.

"It hasn't sunk in yet, has it?" he asks me.

"What has not sunk in?"

"You're new state of being. The fact that you could live forever, or just a very, very long time. The loss of the life you once knew. The realization doesn't fully hit most undead people in the beginning."

I bear no doubt that he is correct. Now that I find myself with the time to actually reflect on my world, I am not entirely sure how. When I was encased in a statue, I had nothing but time, but also no means of interaction. My entire world has changed, and has been full of interaction every minute...I do feel a little overwhelmed.

"I am scared," I confess uncontrollably, immediately wondering why I said that out loud. Embarrassment starts to creep in until one of my friends, once again, comes to the rescue.

"Are you afraid that it's not real?"

My eyes widen and I feel as if I have been seized. "How did you know that?"

"It's a common reaction to those who wake up to a new world, whether they're undead or amnesiac or both. I wouldn't call it denial so much as...being enraptured. It's a lot of information to absorb."

Slowly, the sun starts to rise, occasionally punctuated by the silhouette of Nehekaia flying across it as she circled overhead. The sun will probably be bright, but my friends are hidden in the bushes - I do not think that they will be disturbed.

"I spent so much time paralyzed, before you guys discovered me. That was the only existence I knew for so long...and now, here we are. Running and fighting for our lives from the very second you all discovered me, and we barely spent any time with each other."

The shade flickers for a second, but I do not know if that is his reaction to my words or a simple quality of his incorporeal essence. "Friendship can be formed through shared interests, and similar traits discovered across long conversations and nights spent stargazing like this. It can also be formed through action and the demonstration of reliability and loyalty. You don't need to know every last detail of a person's past and preferences to call them your companion." Without moving his body, his head rotates sideways to look at me. "I'd like to think that all of us here form friendships based on both."

Though being looked at feels a little intense when a person knows that I am not merely a statue, his words provide the only type of warmth that my temperature insensitive body can feel. And that increases my anxiety even more.

"That is why I am afraid."

"You're afraid that this isn't real, and that if you force yourself to sleep, you'll wake up in the zig..." He stops himself from pronouncing that word when he sees me cringe, and the way he plays it off helps me to put it behind me. "That you'll wake up alone again?"

I start to wring my hands. "Yes," I say in a low voice.

After a few moments pause, he turns his entire frame to face me. "I think you _should_ sleep now."

I feel like a laborer waiting for a load, hoping to receive one lighter than my fellows only to be handed the heaviest. It is as if he wants me to face down the thing I fear the...he wants me to face my fear. Yes. The adult thing to do. But not the thing that I want to do.

"I could live without sleeping, according to Finneas."

"As could I. As could he. And there's no reason why you can't make that choice - slumber is a frivolity that even I have indulged in perhaps once or twice since I rose. But I think that will make your situation even worse." Peering at him via my peripheral vision, I find myself unable to voice my curiosity due to my apprehension, and so Ihsan continues. "With time, I expect you'll more easily accept your new life in this new world, especially with a social support group. You'll start to feel normal, and even develop your own independent hopes and desires. Most of the fear will naturally disappear no matter what choice you make.

"But not all of it. Because if you're truly afraid in your heart that this new life isn't real, and that if you sleep then you won't wake back up or will wake up at the same place where you once were, then the fear will linger. It won't fester, but it will linger. And until you challenge yourself by actually trying to sleep, perhaps even dreaming, and then waking up again, that fear will be your eternal companion, more permanent even than us."

My heart is conflict incarnate. On the one hand, I am so happy that he said that out loud, that he knows how I feel, and that apparently other people from these Forsaken feel the same way. I do not feel like I am crazy, nor do I hear any whispers of doubt telling me to fear sleep more than any other thing. On the other hand, he is advising me to face my fear, and soon.

"I feel like...like it is a risk. Like if this is all a dream, then I have the opportunity to let it continue. Before you-" I pause momentarily when I feel myself becoming emotional, and he waits patiently until I can mentally collect myself. "Before you all found me...I forced myself to sleep. I convinced myself that nothing else exists, and that I can just sleep away such an awful world. You were the one who woke me up, Ihsan...when I felt you staring at me, I left that slumber. And maybe that was the start of a dream, you know? Maybe this began with you there and will end with you here if I sleep now, and I will throw it all away."

Hovering next to me, he seems to truly consider what I say, and to consider his response before responding. "From your perspective, I suppose you have no means of truly confirming that fear without direct experience; sense perception isn't a form of evidence in this case. So your choice could very well be between living the dream, and returning to your tomb. I can tell you that this is real, but you have no way of knowing if my words are real, then...I understand if you're afraid. But you will always be. Forever. Any time you get hit by a mortar again, or crash land again, you go unconscious here and fall asleep. The result could be the same: the dream ends. And that fear will never, ever leave you. You can continue the dream, but it will ultimately become a nightmare."

He floats around in front of me, facing me head on in a way that makes me tingle. "It's your choice: live the dream, live with fear. Or take a big risk, the biggest risk, and try to face that fear. Nobody else can make the decision for you...but no matter what you choose, I promise that we will be with you for as long as reality allows."

Because he is incorporeal he can not squeeze my hand, but a few tendrils of shadow reach out to form a little umbrella over me which I assume is the closest thing he can do to such a gesture. No more do I find these people bizarre; I am rapidly getting used to this new world, and my new life, and all the strangeness that comes with it.

I feel the fear wrap around me like shackles, trying to pull me back into an abyss of nothingness and the unknown. In one of the surest moves I believe I will ever make, I cease pulling against it and instead fling myself into it, tackling and bringing it down with me.

"I would like to sleep."

His shadowy essence flickers as his umbrella recedes, and I feel a little exposed until I tell myself that there is nobody other than my friends to see me. "There's enough space on the other side of Purbas for you to curl up in the bushes. It's a perfect fit. Come on, I'll show you." Ihsan leads and I follow, walking back down toward the clump of trees and shrubs that conceal our companions from the rapidly dying twilight. All of them are still fast asleep, curling together in a ball of person in their hiding spot. "See? They left you a spot."

"I guess that they did," I sigh almost wistfully as I gaze upon them. Just one day and a night...that is the entire length of time for which I have known these people. And yet, the thought of separation from them is hurtful. "So I just lay down next to them and close my eyes?"

"It's much simpler than it seems," Ihsan replies. "It felt weird when I tried it the first time, since our bodies no longer require physical rest. But for most of us - not all - closing our eyes and thinking of sleep actually shuts our consciousness down much quicker than it does for the living, and it allows one to rest emotionally. It isn't necessary for the mentally hardier among us, but it sometimes helps. Plus, the habit of not being awake nonstop is comforting for some." He stops talking abruptly, and I can feel his eyes glowing at me as I hesitate. "Any time now."

What is probably a usual expression to him is hilarious to me, and I find myself laughing and unwinding rather quickly. "I understand," I chortle as I push a branch aside to sit down next to Purbas. Nobody stirs at my presence, and I assume them to be in a deep sleep. "How will I wake up?"

"Noise. Or movement. Most of us wake up more easily than mortals since we don't technically need sleep. Don't worry, they won't be able to stand or talk without waking you up."

I nod, and then reach for Purbas out of fear but end up grabbing a fistful of wet leaves instead. After I wipe my hand off on the tree trunk, I find my anxiety rebelling against me.

"I am still afraid."

Rather than babying me, Ihsan continues to push. "You'll always be afraid until you prove to yourself that your new life is real, and not just some dream," he says flatly, dancing the line between advice and pressure.

We look at each other for a moment, both humor and seriousness floating in between us. "Thank you, Ihsan," I tell him. "Do not leave me."

"None of us will. Go on now, sleep. It's a simple act that will relieve so much from your shoulders."

Gradually I am starting to understand their analogies, and that he actually refers to the befuddlement and stress in my psyche. But the longer I dwell on these matters, the more difficult it will be for me to finally face my fear. I nod one more time and then let myself drift, leaning against the tree, which feels quite comfortable to someone with skin as hard as mine. At first, I feel nothing special...no drowsiness nor the sudden shock of thinking I am falling out of a bed for no reason. There is no current, no waves to set me adrift...only darkness.

When I open my eyes, the darkness is still there. Am I asleep? Or is this true awakening?


	64. Goodbye

The nothing is all around me, enveloping all of existence. There is no gravity or direction, no true relativity or depth. All I have is sense perception in a vacuum bereft of stimuli. There is not even darkness; there is simply an absence of color, including dark colors.

I do not float; I can not even say that I am merely here, because there is no here. I am all that exists, and even location is a lie. And in the midst of the nothing, without any focal point to which I can relate myself, I become a part of the nothing.

A dot appears. It is neither close nor far, since distance does not exist. Transparent grey expands, filling in part of the nothing around me as I watch. Images flash and mesh together inside of the surface of the incorporeal being as it grows larger, showing experiences across a lifetime shared between individuals. The mist grows its own features even as the scenes play out inside of it, forming shapes but no other colors.

A glob breaks off from the middle, leaving two larger pieces behind it. The little glob dances around, running in circles around the two larger pieces as I observe my only stimulus to respond to. But I do not respond...I know what these are. It is not the time to talk.

The little glob of mist mews, leaping into the arms of the largest one. They exist further away from me now without moving, location and distance now existing but not movement. The medium sized cloud floats in front of my position, mirroring my very slight movements as I start to notice the speckled pattern on its surface.

"Nice to see you again," it tells me. "I have been away for a long time."

I am confused by her words, and I cock my head sideways. I know her so well, better than she realized, and yet I can not remember her.

She can read my thoughts. "It is alright; in a way, you do not need me anymore," she says, images of birth and joy and hardship and cold all intertwining on her surface. "I will take care of them now...you do not need to worry or to despair. You can have your new life now."

I look back at the man and the cub, realizing who she is talking about. I do not possess speech, but I do not need it when she knows what I am thinking. They all look so happy together...together. Importance of togetherness.

"Maybe we shall meet again someday. I would like that very much. But you need to find your own way...and I am sure you will." She reaches a grey arm forward, and I reach by jet black arm forward without intending to as our fingertips meet. "Keep the name...I obviously do not need it. But worry about nothing else...all is as it should be."

Her words do not entirely make sense to me, but sometimes the point is not the semantic meaning; it is the feeling behind what is said. She is happy, and so is the rest of the mist as her cloud melts back into it. Faces disappear as the grey mist recedes, and I do not find myself sad when I wave goodbye to the personification of memories from a past life. Whoever the man and cub are, that personification will care for them so I do not have to. They are safe, and together.

So am I; just in my own way. They disappear, moving on to another place and leaving me on my own. I fall back, dropping down into the nothing and no longer fighting it. It is time for me to let go.


	65. Ending

I wake up to the feeling of Purbas being pushed by someone on the other side of her.

"Come on, I've been awake for an hour. I'm getting tired of functioning as a sleeping aid for everybody."

My eyes shoot open, my vision clear and without impediment. My mind is hazy, however, and I struggle to remember where I am. Sunlight drifts down in between a wall of leaves, illuminating the ground, a tree trunk, the back of Purbas and two pairs of legs just beyond her. A strong, powerful source of magic crackles without sound as an electric light leaves us, and I sense an absence. But I also sense a few presences.

Zulgha...Barghash...Purbas...they are...here.

I am...here.

I am here!

"Good morning!" I chirp as I hug Purbas, rattling her since she is half asleep. For the first time, I see her irritated but I do not care.

"Ow! Stop, stop, I'm tired, I just woke up!" she protests as I force my hug on her. I let go out of respect, but find my mind racing and easily batting away the creeping doubt that I did not sleep at all and did not truly challenge myself. "You're certainly happy today...how long did you sleep with us?"

"I have no idea!" I chirp again, happily helping her up while our two bipedal friends sleep. When I pull her out of the bushes, my eyes are stung again and I find that we are nearing the noontime. "Everybody is here!"

None of our surroundings have changed in the least. Ghouls of several races pace around the valley, and Nehekaia continues to circle our position overhead, none of them growing tired of their watch. Even our more sentient companions can be seen as Shelly and Hondakai pace near the declining entrance of the valley while Bhayangkari creeps on the ledges overhead. In reaction to our awakening, Sweetiepie cackles, sending a chill up my spine before Finneas tutting his tongue draws my attention. He starts to make a negative comment, but I tune him out in my joy at waking up and feeling, even with my dulled sense of touch, the snow crunch beneath my paws.

My shadow moves strangely and I realize that Ihsan had somehow been hiding in it. Emerging and floating up to my eye level, that familiar non face looks at me. "You slept for over five hours," he tells me, his outline barely visible due to all of the sunlight. "You didn't move an inch or talk, unlike Purbas."

Already irritated, my nerubian friend falls to the limit of her tolerance so early. "Grow up," she tells him before pulling away from both of us. Contrite, she turns back and pats me on the arm as if to reassure me that I am not the source of her frustration and then promptly runs behind another patch of bushes to handle what I assume I would be doing were I mortal.

Ihsan does not react, instead speaking to me as if nothing happened. "You're still here. So is the world. How do you feel?"

That is a good question, actually. I have barely been awake for two minutes. "I...just woke up," I chortle, slightly bothered by the sound of my own laugh but less so when compared to the previous, much more eventful day. "Perhaps the feeling still has yet to hit me."

Sweeping his head from side to side such that specs of shadow fall off of him, Ihsan makes a show of demonstrating his denial. "That isn't so likely...I don't think there really is anything to hit you. You're real and so is your new state of being; now it's simply time to start living it. And to transition smoothly into that, without the need for major soul searching just to enjoy the world."

Though his words are not what I was hoping for, I can see the logic in them: to eschew huge philosophical questions over my existence and just embrace it. "Thank you," I tell him, "for everything."

"Thank you for saving our rear ends from Nehekaia, and for falling into your spot on the team so well."

I think that he might be smiling, but I can not quite tell and feel too shy to ask. For a few minutes, the two of us just look around, joined by Finneas most likely because the decayed human is bored and has nothing better to do. Eventually we start to hear leaves rustling behind us.

"It appears that the last of us are awake now," Ihsan says as he floats back toward where the orc and the non decayed human are rising from their slumber. Purbas crawls back toward us, relatively refreshed and in a much better mood. "Hey," the shade says to her.

Purbas must like me personally, because the friendly nature I have grown used to is absent when she deals with Ihsan. "Hey," she replies, her voice in the sort of tone that implies a person does not want to apologize but does not want to argue or fight, either. "Is he up? There's not much reason for us to wait here."

She obviusly does not mean Finneas, so it is easy for me to figure out who she means. In seconds, Barghash emerges from the bushes, very awake and alert looking after only five hours of sleep, which I think is not enough for the living but I honestly can not remember. Much of my muscle memory remains from my former life, but details such as sleep patterns escape me.

Raising his fist again, his rings glow ever so slightly in some sort of a signal. Immediately, the more sentient among the minions approach us. Bhayangkari and Sweetiepie leap down from above us while Shelly and Hondakai lumber over, and even Nehekaia starts to descend in wide circles. I notice that the ghouls, possessing inferior mental faculties, continue to patrol. We all line up, waiting for Barghash who waits for Zulgha who still looks sleepy as she drags herself over to us, her usually messy hair oddly less messy after sleep. She looks rather cute when she rubs her eyes, but does not notice me staring.

Nehekaia takes her time descending safely, so Barghash starts to speak. "Job well done, everybody; this has been one hell of a trip. But there's no sense in staying out here in the open now that we've rested. With a ride like this," he says while pointing upward toward the frost wyrm, "we can make it to Vengeance Landing even more quickly that we'd last anticipated. Does anybody have anything else that needs to be taken care of before we leave?"

A few of my friends murmur, but nobody actually says anything and Finneas shakes his head on behalf of all of us without asking our permission. Afraid of annoying people with my depiction, I refrain from thanking them all again for finding me and resign myself to staying silent like the others.

"Fair enough, then," the necromancer says. "The next part will be a bit difficult, but once we reach the Landing, we can more properly rest up; at this point, the difference between another day on the continent won't be anything major. And then, once we're ready, we can catch the next zeppelin back to Brill and have Nehekaia carry some of the minions next to us."

On cue, the frost wyrm lands, kicking up a wave of snow as she hits the ground with a surprisingly light thud that does not send any vibration through the ground. Her eyes glow with ice like her heart, and I sense no hostility in her. I also sense much less intelligence than when she was a human, so perhaps the trade off has been a success in terms of keeping her docile. I notice that everybody starts staring at her intently as if they are trying to solve a puzzle.

"Shelly and Dak in one claw each," says Zulgha, "and Purbas can cling to her rather easily. Can you also web some of the minions to her back and tail?" she asks the nerubian.

"Yes, definitely. I've rested up, but it will take pretty much all of my webbing to keep every one of them secure. Two more could fit in Nehekaia's other claws, though, which would make things easier. For the rest of you, I'll have to web your legs to her vertebrae since she has no saddle or stirrups-"

"I'll give you a ride!"

My phrase was blurted out at an inopportune time, and everybody turns toward me. However, the fact that I am looking right at Zulgha and Barghash makes my intent very clear, and my excitement at the prospect of traveling while not either in danger or clueless about my surroundings wipes away any embarrassment I might otherwise feel.

In seconds, Zulgha already looks brighter and her eyes shine. "Oh - you mean we can sit on your back while you fly?" She looks at me excitedly and then to Barghash as if to seek approval from the unspoken but understood and accepted leader of the group.

Cold, emotionless eyes stare as firmly and objectively as ever, an ice that is neither magical nor tangible flickering in there as always. But ever so slightly, I can see the shift in Barghash. The curve at the corner of his mouth, the barely visible dimple that appears on one smirking cheek, the barely noticeable drop of one eyebrow, all of it. Looking at him now is like looking at a person born to fight being granted one afternoon to live as a child again.

"I, for one, would be honored to fly with you," he says, much to the delight of Zulgha.

Jealousy forms a noxious mixture with stubborn obstinacy in the electric glowing eyes of Finneas. "But wha-" is all he can say before cutting himself off. Really, what can he say? If he protests then he will appear petty, and if he complains then he will appear spurned. Thankfully for him, nobody pays his weird gibberish half sentence any mind, and the minions start to assemble around Nehekaia.

As several of the minions lay down on the ground for the frost wyrm to pick them up in her claws, the others stand by her tail and try to cling to it. Purbas follows them and starts to slowly spin her webs around their mid sections and the gigantic vertebrae, keeping them secure in positions that sentient beings would find too harrowing when soaring hundreds of feet in the air. Ever the stick in the mud, Finneas takes a seat on the neck of the undead dragon, technically where a pilot should sit. By all measures he should not be upset, but he is because he just is.

While Barghash is busy overseeing the placing of the suspended ghouls alongside Purbas, Zulgha begins to chatter, quite unlike the rest of the group.

"You're going to enjoy Brill so much! Everybody there is either undead or used to the undead, and even the birds and mice and rabbits are undead. Everything is dark and awesome all the time, plus very few of us there need food or water or even money, so you can almost do whatever you want."

Although I doubt the factual accuracy of some of her claims, I listen intently regardless. I am sure that it is at least partially true, and I am also happy to have somebody willing to tell me so much about the place that will be, for better or for worse, my home.

"So we just need to fly across the ocean?" I ask as Purbas webs away.

"Yes but it's easy! You can probably fly faster than the zeppelin anyway, so you only really need to stick close by as a safety precaution. And, you know, because you don't have any idea where Lordaeron is. But Vengeance Landing is also a Forsaken city so you'll get a small taste of what undeath is like there. Then, once we rest up, you'll get your first taste of international air travel." She grabs my arm with both hands, and I start to realize that Zulgha might not be young so much as just really optimistic. "Once you settle in at Brill, we can go on even more adventures - that's pretty much all we do. We didn't bring in much loot this time, but a frost wyrm is more than enough, plus everybody in town will be glad to have you. So when the celebration is over, we get to move on to more places - wherever adventure and artifacts and anything weird that Dr. Bunsenburger wants can be found."

Few people can talk so much after a single question, and Zulgha proceeds to fill my head with more information than Purbas and Barghash did combined. After a few minutes of learning every last detail about Tirisfal Glades, Purbas waves us over.

"Finished!" she says while pointing toward her work. Shelly and Hondakai are held in the front claws of Nehekaia while two of the draenei ghouls are held in the read claws. Further ghouls are secured to each vertebrae in the massive back of the frost wyrm, and Finneas sits up on the neck. Purbas herself crawls in between the two expansive wings, nestled in between the two shoulder blades as Ihsan floats in between her and Finneas. "Are you guys ready?" she asks.

Zulgha is about to answer but then looks up at me. I suppose that her behavior is more polite - if I am the one offering a ride, then she might feel presumptuous to answer for us. Though even if she did, I would not be offended.

"Yes," I reply, "we are ready."

I walk over toward Nehekaia and Barghash, who is the only other person not riding the former blue dragon. For the first time I see him hesitate, as if the act of climbing on to my back feels a bit awkward for him. It certainly does for me, but it is not a bad awkwardness. More than ever, I feel that these people are my friends and perhaps even my new family.

I turn my flank so both he and Zulgha will have an easier time climbing on. "It is alright; my flight is unencumbered by humanoids," I assure them.

Much less apprehensive, Zulgha hops right in to my back, not even causing me to shift. She leans back so Barghash can fit in front of her but behind my wings. "You're sure this is fine?" he asks me one last time.

"Sure I am sure!"

"Very well, then. Let's ride!"

Spreading my wings again, I flap them and feel my rather low mana pool tingle. Cheeky in my own way, I reach a hand out and eat a good chunk of mana from Finneas knowing that his heart will never stop producing the stuff. He glares and says a bad word at me, but I am already rising up into the sky, and Barghash does not give the command for Nehekaia to follow until he is sure that I am stable.

Up and up, I flap my wings and ascend. The snow and trees and bushes shift from around me to beneath me and then they shrink. The valley becomes a little crack in the ground as I continue to gain altitude straight up, and even the frost wyrm appears to simply move straight upward as she follows me. Hills and mountains become little bumps in the soil, and cumulonimbus clouds become a ceiling that seems closer than what it probably is. I am high, so high, like a diamond in the sky, and I feel even more stable than were I to run along the ground.

Zulgha lets out a little cheer as I start to fly in the same direction that Nehekaia starts in, her now primitive mind readily accepting direction from Barghash. I can just imagine the messy hair of the orc whipping around in the wind behind me, and the icy heart of a death merchant warming up just enough to smile. Even without blood or adrenaline, I feel the rush as Nehekaia picks up speed, and the only reason that I do not overtake her is because I do not know exactly where we are going. I do not know...but I will go regardless. Wherever these people take me, I will follow. Just like they led me out of my tomb and my encasing, they will surely lead me to other places. No matter how much I lost in terms of my former world, I will not let the past hold me back from my new one.

Wind blows in between my ears, scenery below passes rapidly in a picture more beautiful than what any artist could recreate, and my excitement grows when Nehekaia spontaneously roars. In a way, I finally feel alive.

 **A/N: whew! Well, I never intended the story to go on for this long, but there it is. Initially I considered showing when they reach Vengeance Landing and then head to Brill, but it would have felt superfluous since the major conflict has been resolved. Thus, it ends here; they reach the Landing and then peacefully fly to Brill without incident. About that, there is no ambiguity in my mind.**

 **Initially, I started thinking of this while waiting in line at a sandwich shop. The idea disappeared and I didn't entertain it again for a few weeks, until I was watching a really boring movie with my family and just wrote the first chapter in my mobile with a single thumb. I put no deadline for myself and just wrote more chapters whenever I was in a waiting room, at a reception desk or otherwise had time to spare. Only when this became a concrete origin piece for a character that I want to continue did full length chapters enter the planning phase.**

 **I rarely ever write characters for a single story; I prefer them to pop in and out and reappear and make cameos. For sure, I intend to keep all of these characters in my mind and write about them again one day. But for the time being, since I've already published so much, I'll probably take a bit of a break.**

 **For all of you who stuck with this laborious story to the very end, I thank you so much. I truly do hope that reading this brightened your day. For any future plans, check my Deviant Art account where I often brainstorm about this stuff. Also, there is commissioned artwork of these characters by MischiArt on that site as well, so check her out. I wish everyone all the best. :)**


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